Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat made a comment earlier this week in reaction to a report by the National Audit Office on a questionable agreement pertaining to the removal of certain conditions on land used by the company Fortina.

The NAO found that when in July 2019 Parliament voted in favour of allowing Fortina to use its land in Sliema to develop apartments and other commercial activities not exclusively related to tourism in exchange for the sum of €8.1 million, this price was an undervaluation of some €16 million.

The NAO found that Lands Authority chairman Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco had kept a valuation report by an audit firm which showed the actual value of the land hidden from decision makers: ergo members of Cabinet and Parliament as a whole.

Farrugia Sacco served as a judge until his retirement in 2014, and was appointed as the first chairman of the Lands Authority in 2017. He passed away at the age of 72 in October 2021.

Commenting on the NAO report on social media, Joseph Muscat first of all pointed out that the report made no mention of him personally: "Had the NAO thought I had any direct involvement in the deal, I am sure they would have said so. Also, had they wanted to make a remark about me, I am very positive they would not have said 'officials within Government'," Muscat said.

He went on to say that the way which the report was written was "in very bad taste, burdening everything on a seasoned former member of the judiciary who has passed and could not defend himself."

"I am more than sure that had Mr Justice Farrugia Sacco still been alive, he would have replied very solidly to many assumptions and loaded statements in the report. While the author of the NAO report states there is a serious limitation in scope, he goes on to totally ignore it, with the reader barely realizing that the main decision maker died and was not able to give his account of events,"Muscat said.

Muscat's sanctimonious sentiment, however, is inconsistent with his own actions.

One could argue that 'bad taste' would be continuing to sue the heirs of someone who was murdered - and as it happens, Muscat is to this day persisting with a libel case that he had filed against Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered in a car bomb in 2017.

In 2019 the Council of Europe had urged Muscat to drop the case, but Muscat said that he would only do so if the Caruana Galizia family were to make a declaration that would ultimately translate into the denouncement of Daphne's work - a concept that Daphne's family refused to kneel to.

The very existence of this key fact belies the contradiction of the former Prime Minister's apparently selective taste buds. Muscat is happy to continue suing the heirs of the dead, but at the same time feels it's in 'bad taste' for national auditors to continue their own investigations into a potential national scandal which involved an individual who unfortunately has passed away.

You cannot have it both ways.