Foreign Direct Investment into the country is certainly nothing to be scoffed at, but in this day and age, and judging from the experiences of the last five-odd years, such investments it should be at least looked at very closely indeed.

The FDI in question is Crane Currency, which had something of an inauguration yesterday, attended and addressed by none other than the Prime Minister himself.

And while very few in Malta are looking at this investment with a critical eye, the European Union is.  You see, this was one of those strange deals that have the fingerprints of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff all over it.

The European Commission is, in actual fact, and this was most certainly not mentioned by any of the speakers at yesterday’s do, investigating the Crane Currency deal over the suspected granting of illegal state aid.

This comes after, and actually because, the government had rolled out the red carpet, and the accompanying incentives, to bring the company to Malta. There are several insinuations about who may stand to profit from this deal, and those persons may be no more than a stone’s throw away from the Prime Minister’s personal office.

Right after securing the Malta deal, the company was sold off to another party for around US$800 million. That deal led none other than former Prime Minister and current MEP Alfred Sant to arch his eyebrows and question ‘What, exactly, is going on?’ and he correctly pointed out that the deal Crane had finalised in Malta had driven its real value to a much higher level than that shown in its audited financial accounts.

In this case, as in so many over these last handful of years, the company appears to have struck a sweetheart deal with the government, saw its value driven skywards by the attractive incentives offered by the government, and then it was sold, presumably to t the highest bidder, at a profit.

This all reads from a textbook on how to raid state assets and get away with it. It seems to us, someone has been hoodwinked here – either the government or us regular taxpaying mortals.

The same could be said of the Vitals hospital deal, which saw enormous incentives given to the company to take over the running of three hospitals, only, like in the case of Crane, to sell out a little further down the road.

That said, it does not imply that Crane will not make a wonderful enterprise out if its Malta facility, with the incentives under its belt it would be hard not to, or that the new operators of the hospitals, Steward Healthcare will not do what they have to do in a marvellous fashion.

These deals, and all other deals of a similar ilk, need to be thoroughly investigated but, left to its own devices, there is little reason for the government to lift an investigative finger. Who, after all, would want their own deals investigated?

It is at least reassuring to note that the Opposition leader is intent on seeing justice for what he believes was the theft of state hospitals, and that the European Commission takes infractions of state aid rules, such as that apparently granted to Crane in that strange sweetheart deal, very seriously indeed.