Tomorrow at 2pm EDT (or, if my calculations are correct, 8pm Malta time) the International Consortium of Concerned Journalists will release a searchable database with information on more than 200,000 offshore entities that are part of the Panama Papers investigation. The database of people who are not politically exposed will likely be the largest ever release of secret offshore companies and the people behind them.

Malta’s name has already been dragged in the mud and pilloried on the international scene thanks to Minister Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.

Our country has the unenviable distinction of being the only EU member state in which such high-placed and high-powered individuals joined this club of shame after they were raised to public office. The fact that they still strut in their high placings in government does not augur well for the morality of the powers that be.

Tomorrow, Malta will feature once more in this database. It is public knowledge that there are 676 Malta-based companies, 42 clients, 59 beneficiaries and 277 shareholders. We still have to see who they are and which jurisdictions they are using, since some are famous mainly for tax avoidance while others are notorious for unsavory stuff like money laundering and other forms of corruption. Though it does not mean that all the individuals who have companies in the 21 tax havens to be revealed – extending from Hong Kong to Nevada in the US – have necessarily broken the law, these secretive jurisdictions of tax avoidance are still “a huge problem”, as President Barack Obama rightly says.

In the case of politically exposed persons, using such jurisdictions is simply scandalous, more so when they are not just tax avoidance havens. Worse still is the setting up of such companies or trusts without declaring them, as the law obliged both Mizzi and Schembri.

The Panama Papers revelation is just one in a long series of such exposés made in the public interest. Swiss leaks and Wikileaks are two other examples. It seems the truth has insistent ways of letting itself be discovered and prevailing. Pilate was not interested in listening to it. Mossack Fonseca aided the corrupt to hide it. But violà … names are named and documents made public. Secrecy be damned.

Technology is making this more possible. One would have needed the use of a fleet of very large trucks to remove 11.5 million docu­ments from the Mossack Fonseca offices. The same was true of the documents made public by Julian Assange or Edward Snowden.

Searching the documents would have taken years. Technology has made the transfer of massive documents easier as electronic docu­ments hardly occupy any space. The same applies to their analysis.

Technology alone is not enough. There is the need for public-spirited whistleblowers who believe in the supremacy of the truth. Consequently they dutifully risk all to make such documents widely available. The determination of the whistleblowers would come to nothing unless a suitable vehicle is provided by journalists who communicate the information to the masses.

This naming and shaming as well as the ethicising effect of the publication, has little effect unless other institutions do their duty. It is only when this cycle is complete that one can say that truth does indeed prevail.

Incumbents in several constitutional and other institutions in Malta have absconded the duty they have sworn to fulfil

Eddie Fenech Adami’s statement that “Is-sewwa jirbaħ żgur” (Truth will prevail) has been taken up by one and all. Before the last election it was used by Joseph Muscat as much as it was used by Lawrence Gonzi.

Use can mean either adoption or lip service. It is the former only when it becomes a political programme more than just a slogan.

Such a political programme flies in the face of the sceptic who believes there is no place for truth in politics as people care for ‘bread’ more than they care for ‘truth’. It contradicts the cyni­cal politicians who give out bits of truth when and if convenient for them to achieve short-term good (e.g. electoral victory) more than the long-term common good of society.

“Is-sewwa” in Fenech Adami’s maxim has a wider meaning than truth understood in the scholastic philosophical definition as conformity between the intellect and reality. Is-sewwa includes what is the right and decent thing to do. Fenech Adami used it to mean, for example, that it was not right and decent that a party with an absolute minority of votes governs with a majority of seats.

Today it means that it is not right and decent to form coalitions based on self-serving pre-electoral covert deals aimed to win elections. Politicians should seek election animus serviendi (to serve) not animus mangiandi (i.e. behave as voracious gluttons).

Those who espouse is-sewwa condemn the corrupt, not the journalists who expose illegalities. It is obscene to attack journalists who uncover scandals while desperately defending those who perform scandals.

But “is-sewwa jirbaħ żgur” only when the cycle of decent behaviour is not broken. In the Panama Papers scandal the media are on the forefront of cleaning the mess. Unfortunately incumbents in several constitutional and other institutions in Malta have absconded the duty they have sworn to fulfil.

Perhaps a statement by Winston Churchill could serve as a good warning: “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

Indeed… here it is:

(The database can be accessed from https://offshoreleaks.icij.org)

• What attitude should people adopt in their relations with politicians? The British writer, critic and delightful contrarian A.A. Gill wrote in The Sunday Times of London on May 3, 2015:

“It is often said that we get the politicians we deserve. Actually we get the politicians we fashion, and perhaps we ought to think of our responsibility to be the employers they deserve.”

Not a bad attitude to be adopted by those who really want what is right and decent to prevail.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt

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