Last year started with the Panama Papers story and ended with the Auditor General’s papers story, which may turn out to be much more serious than the Panama Papers.

The reason is a simple one. While the Panama Papers story was built and inflated on imaginary “millions of euros hidden in a shell company in Panama”, the millions mentioned in the Auditor General’s papers (the two damning reports) are real and not imaginary – a cool €8 million worth, as valued by the NAO, of government land transferred to a well-known PN benefactor for the paltry sum of €706,000.

There is another big difference between these two stories. The person involved in the Panama Papers story, Konrad Mizzi, had immediately faced the press, gave an explanation and also asked the Commissioner of Inland Revenue to carry out a tax audit on all his assets, both in Malta and abroad. The Prime Minister had also ordered two investigations, one locally and another one by an international audit company.

On this latest Auditor General’s papers story, the person involved, former Nationalist minister Jason Azzopardi, has been running away from journalists fearing they could ask him embarrassing questions. The leader of the Opposition has not said anything and allowed his deputy, Beppe Fenech Adami, to unleash a hysterical attack in Parliament on Justice Minister Owen Bonnici for offering Azzopardi time in the House to give his reaction to the Auditor General’s damning reports.

If I remember correctly, former PN general secretary, Paul Borg Olivier, had once said that, at times, the party used a system of “barter” to pay off debts. The big question is whether the PN had used the ‘barter’ system in this latest scandal to hit the PN.

How easy it is for any political leader to talk about “setting high standards of good governance” and about “honest politics” but then fails miserably when having to walk the talk.