When Simon Busuttil had gone to court with a heap of documents related to allegations of corruption involving Keith Schembri and Adrian Hillman, the Labour Party had tried to make a fool out of the then Opposition Leader and claimed that the box files were "empty."
Worse still, then PM Joseph Muscat had accused Busuttil of trying to waste the court's time.
Today, we know that those boxes weren't empty. And this was certainly not a waste of time.
The investigations carried out on the basis of those documents have led to some very serious charges against Schembri and several others.
After investigating the claims made in those "empty" box files, the magistrate and the police discovered a devilish plan that saw Allied Newspapers - publishers of Times of Malta - defrauded out of millions of euro over its purchase of a printing machine from Schembri's Kasco.
The court heard this week how the company was charged some €5.5 million extra, and how Schembri bought the printing press using offshore companies in order to avoid tax.
Kasco allegedly made a €5 million profit from the corrupt deal, and the money was to be split up between Keith Schembri, Adrian Hillman, Vince Buhagiar and Malcolm Scerri.
Three of them have already been charged with money laundering while the fourth, who is the subject of a European Arrest Warrant, is expected to share a similar fate.
History has proved Simon Busuttil right on this one. The question is: what else was he right about?
Which takes us back to a speech Busuttil delivered in Parliament on 12 November 2019 - a week before Yorgen Fenech was arrested and charged with being a mastermind in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
In that speech, Busuttil had referred to how he had been sued by Schembri after he had accused the latter of corruption during a protest in 2016, shortly after the Panama scandal broke.
Schembri had employed many delaying tactics in court, and PM Joseph Muscat had stuck his neck out for his colleague and friend.
Over the following months, it emerged that Schembri and Konrad Mizzi's Panama companies were to receive moneys from a company called 17 Black. It was later revealed that the Dubai company belonged to none other than Yorgen Fenech.
When Schembri finally appeared in court to be cross-examined, his lawyers tried every play in the book to keep him from talking. When that failed and Schembri was ordered by the magistrate to testify, Schembri first refused, saying that he risked incriminating himself, and then dropped the court case entirely.
Busuttil had said that this showed two things: firstly, that a crime would have to have been committed for someone to incriminate himself; and secondly that the fact that Schembri dropped the case was in itself an admission of guilt.
"On the witness stand, he refused to say what his link to 17 Black was. He had two choices ... either go to prison or answer. He chose to drop the case. This means that what Daphne said was true. What I said during the protest was true. That the claims they were going to receive money from corruption was true."
We have to keep in mind that Schembri was or is the subject of various inquiries.
The Schembri-Hillman inquiry has been concluded and police action was recommended.
Another inquiry about alleged kickbacks from Nexia BT's Brian Tonna to Schembri from the passport sales has also been concluded. In this particular case, no evidence was found that Schembri took kickbacks, but the magistrate declared that she did not believe the versions given by Schembri and Tonna. The Nexia BT boss, in fact, is currently being prosecuted.
There is yet another inquiry - one that is looking specifically into 17 Black - and which is still ongoing.
There are various other accusations Schembri is facing, including that he was helping his friend Yorgen Fenech evade justice by leaking him information from the Daphne murder investigation - the 'little' matter of Keith's lost mobile phone.
The country was this week transfixed on the court proceedings with relation to the Allied inquiry, but the fact is that there is much more that Keith Schembri is linked to.
It is quite safe to say that this political and corruption saga will not end here, or any time soon.
Busuttil had said something else in that Parliamentary speech which is still very relevant today. "They betrayed the public's trust and people are angry," he had said.
People still feel angry and betrayed now, including many genuine labourites who cannot believe how a small group of individuals turned what could have been one of the best governments in recent times into a quagmire of corruption.