We carry in our issue today stories about the suffering being caused by the Satabank decisions taken by the authorities. Unfortunately, except for this newsroom, the issue does not seem to feature in most other news sources.

As a result, people out there have simply no idea of the devastation being caused not just to people but also to companies who put their money in the ebank.

There have been stories in the media of people with grave illnesses who have run out of money to pay for their medical expenses, of people who had to borrow from friends to be able to survive, etc.

But this does not even begin to describe the situation where companies are involved. It is axiomatic that an i-gaming company cannot even face a disruption eg in the electricity supply or the internet access of just half an hour for it would risk its customers abandoning it and moving to competition. Let alone for months on end. This situation has been enduring since February and the closure is already some weeks old and does not look like being over any time soon.

Or take the restaurant owner who cannot use his POS nor can he buy provisions. How can he face his customers or persuade them to keep going to his restaurant and not cross over to the competition?

From what one can gather, there were indeed issues with Satabank regarding some of its clients with a dodgy background or operation. Maybe the authorities were warned even in past years when Satabank was moving to Malta. But surely not all the bank's clients can be described as dodgy or criminal-minded.

The bank's modus operandi is a fast one, based on IT, a cash-less bank and its stripped-down procedures and modalities made it highly attractive. Also, many of the people and clients who it attracted felt, rightly or wrongly, that they had been fobbed off by the traditional banks in Malta when they approached them to open accounts in Malta and the paperwork that was demanded was quite time-wasting. Anyway, they flocked to Satabank and now they are up the creek with no paddle.

We are surely not blaming the authorities in Malta for acting when suspicions were raised especially after the international ruckus with Pilatus Bank but surely things could have been done differently. In a way, so is our impression, Satabank is paying for Pilatus Bank.

In many other countries in Europe (and elsewhere) when something like that happened, the bank in question was split into good bank and bad bank and while the good bank continued to operate, the bad bank was unraveled and its issues tackled.

In the UK, multi-billion pound fines were levied for a variety of sins including banks' roles in rigging Libor interest rates, interfering with foreign exchange markets and failing to prevent money laundering as well as for mis-selling derivatives.

An analysis by This is money.com revealed Lloyds is the bank that has suffered the heaviest penalties with at least £23.4 billion in conduct-related costs and write-offs since 2008. These are largely due to fines and compensation to customers from the payment protection insurance scandal.

RBS is second on the list. Its conduct and litigation costs since 2008, including amounts it has earmarked but not yet used, add up to £20.6 billion.

Earlier this year, the bailed-out bank agreed to pay £3.6 billion to settle an investigation by the US Department of Justice for mis-selling mortgage-backed securities - the bonds at the heart of the 2008 crisis in America.

A few weeks after the collapse in September 2008 of Lehman Brothers, the UK Government announced it was to bail out RBS and Lloyds to the tune of £45.5 billion and £20.3 billion respectively. The British taxpayer still owns 62 per cent of RBS and faces multi-billion pound losses on its stake, but sold its remaining Lloyds shares last year.

Fines, legal fees and customer compensation costs for Barclays since the crisis are close to £17 billion.

That includes a £1.4 billion settlement with the DoJ in the US earlier this year for misleading investors in the run-up to the crisis about the quality of the mortgage-backed securities it sold them. The penalty was half the amount the authorities initially demanded.

Barclays avoided a UK state bailout - but only by taking £12 billion in emergency funding from the state of Qatar. This move has proved just as controversial. The Serious Fraud Office applied last July to the High Court to reinstate charges over the deal that had previously been dismissed.

The SFO had charged Barclays and four former directors in 2017 with conspiracy to commit fraud. It described a £2 billion loan given to Qatar by Barclays in November 2008 as 'unlawful financial assistance'.

HSBC has forked out nearly £10 billion in fines and other costs for its conduct since 2008. This included a £1.5 billion fine in 2012 for failing to prevent Mexican drugs cartels from money laundering and for violating US sanctions by working with Iran.

In other words, the UK authorities were robust enough to enforce fines and other punishment even against global banks. Can we deduce our authorities are pussy-footed even when faced with a bank that seems to have relocated to Malta from its original country when faced with disciplinary action?

One last point: forget sanctions from the EU, the ECB and the like. The real damage is being done now by the sheer incompetence of the Maltese authorities who in just a short space of time are pulling down all that was painstakingly built over the years by the hard-working people in the financial services sector. The way the Satabank affair has been mishandled shows that the incompetents have taken over