One of two magisterial inquiries linked to the Panama Papers investigation is at a “crucial” stage, a public inquiry board was told this week.

The inquiries form part of a police investigation codenamed Operation Green, which is looking into allegations involving disgraced former OPM chief of Staff Keith Schembri and Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna.

The update given by Assistant Commissioner Alexandra Mamo, the new head of the police Economic Crimes Unit, is most welcome and seems to show that things are finally moving.

The Panama Papers revelations, after all, did not come out last week. We have been waiting for four years for the authorities to do their job and investigate and prosecute where need be.

Mamo was asked, during this week’s inquiry sitting, why the ECU had failed to investigate back in 2016. She replied that she, “cannot speak for what happened at that time, not to be disrespectful,” but added that these investigations are ongoing. “Persons have been arrested and are on police bail.”

While it seems that the ECU, under new leadership, is more eager to investigate these political scandals, there is so much more to investigate than just Operation Green, and we doubt that the unit has the resources required for such a mammoth task.

We say this because the Panama Papers are far more than just the allegations about Schembri and Tonna. They involve so many more individuals, including Konrad Mizzi, who had also opened up a questionable company in Panama and, of course, Egrant. A full-blown inquiry had found no proof that it belonged to Joseph Muscat, but we still do not know who the owner was.

There are also the links to 17 Black, which need to be investigated. The company, which belongs to alleged Daphne Caruana Galizia murder mastermind Yorgen Fenech, was listed as a target client for Mizzi and Schembri’s companies.

But there are so many other investigations that need to be carried out by the Malta Police Force, many of which are not directly linked with the Panama Papers. These include the role of 17 Black in the Montenegro wind farm scandal, and the dodgy dealings and ministerial interventions in the contentious Electrogas deal. There is the Vitals deal too that needs some serious looking into by the police, because everything suggests that the public is still being robbed through a stinking deal that benefits only a few.

We keep talking about the Panama Papers but so much more has been uncovered since 2016 that we have started to lose count of the scandals. The fact that the authorities turned a blind eye to many of them over the past years has only led to greater pressure on the police force today. There is now a staggering backlog of cases which is not easy to clear.

Yes, great strides have been made, and it is true that some people have been arrested. But the fact remains that no one has been prosecuted so far, and not a single investigation has been concluded. We have been hearing about progressing investigations for months and years now, but we have not seen any results yet. We wait with bated breath until Operation Green is concluded, but we also expect to see many other investigations launched and concluded, with results.