The exposé by The Sunday Times of Malta (August 28) of a trip to a top London hotel by a businessman, a banker, and the chairman of the Planning Authority should serve as a warning to anybody contemplating crime or corruption of any kind.
Without suggesting that there might have been any, even remote, connection between the trip, a €10 million bank loan, and planning permission with which it ‘roughly coincided’, the exposure merely proves that, these days, there are no secrets.
The Panama Affair showed brilliantly that even the holdings in a distant offshore bank – one renowned for its speciality in secret, and (therefore) often criminally dubious, dealings – can be brought to light by people who know how and where to look.
In last Sunday’s case we learnt that a newspaper can get (at least) sight of a businessman’s credit card transactions from two years ago, which appear to show that he picked up the tab for all three of them. (Although a €1,200 bill at the Royal Garden Hotel could equally possibly have been for only one person.)
Bank accounts and credit cards are supposedly secret and personal. Not any longer.
Many years ago, when I was asked to help define ‘corruption’ for a UK commission into standards in public life, one (of many) was that there may be nothing wrong with one friend accepting the hospitality of another – provided that if there were any business relationship between the two, the official declared and explained it immediately afterwards (but preferably in advance) to his superior. Better, that he pays his own way; better still, he should refuse the offer.
It may be that the banker and the Planning Authority chairman both declared the trip and the financial arrangements, and that both received the approval of their principals. In which case, no big problem for the rest of us.
But the point is that their trip is now public knowledge. It is embarrassing, at least, and suspicious, at most. The public are entitled to some sort of explanation.
Is nothing sacred – not even bank statements – these days? No: nothing is sacred and nothing is secret.