One year after the Panama Papers story broke, Konrad Mizzi refuses to take any more questions on his Panama company, saying he has exhausted all questions on the matter. Really? You could have fooled us. Every time he’s bothered to answer a question, he has raised another dozen in any thinking person’s mind.

He certainly did not convince the European Parliament’s Pana committee, including its socialist members. After Mizzi appeared before the committee, Werner Langen, the chairman, told the press that, in appearance at least, all the actions suggested money laundering; that is, criminal intent. I have personally yet to meet someone who doesn’t share Langen’s view.

The real issue is whether we need to continue to discuss the matter. At this stage, who is likely to change their mind, one way or another?

The fact is the issue isn’t dead. Our minds might not change but the story we’re told keeps changing. And the changing story shows how the government’s attitude towards the electorate is changing.

Let’s take Mizzi’s explanations and accusations first. They haven’t just changed significantly over time. They have shifted depending on his audience. Some of the things he told us, he didn’t tell the Pana committee. Other things he told Pana, he didn’t tell us.

Pana asked him why he opened his company in Panama. He didn’t say he avoided Malta because it would have constituted a ‘conflict of interest’ with his ministerial duties.

Nor did he say it was because he had an ‘international family’. He didn’t say that his wife lives in another country and, therefore, they chose a ‘neutral’ country for their trust. Nor did he tell them that he was thinking of his post-ministerial earnings after he left politics (in 2023 at the earliest, given that he’s a general election candidate).

He said all of those things to us because he thought us unsophisticated enough to swallow them. And because he didn’t yet know what the Panama Papers contained. Had he told all those things to Pana, their gales of laughter would have blown him out of the room.

So, he simply said he followed his financial advisers’ counsel. Knowing that, on its own, that sounded lame, he added a couple of things he hadn’t said when public fury was at its most volcanic.

Mizzi told the Pana committee the story was driven as part of a “wider coordinated attack” orchestrated by the Nationalist Party with the aim of “character assassination”. He has also taken to saying this to Maltese journalists. But that’s not what his protector, Joseph Muscat, was saying after he realised the extent of the anger within the Labour Party, not just among its opponents.

The real issue is whether we need to continue to discuss the matter

At the time, Muscat said he understood the anger. Addressing a Commonwealth conference on corruption, Muscat said the news “wasn’t nice”.

So, when facing Pana, the story is “fake news”. When addressing a justifiably angry public, however, the Prime Minister knew enough not to provoke the public further. He admitted enough to cool things down, at least within Labour, until he secured a parliamentary vote of confidence in Mizzi. Once the anger subsided, the story shifted: Mizzi was now the victim.

And what a victim. Pana wanted to know how he explained the requests for the opening of a bank account, with a commitment to deposit huge sums that he couldn’t possibly earn legitimately as a minister.

Mizzi said his financial advisers had confused him with Keith Schembri, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff. He never told us that. Last year, he was blaming journalists for confusing him and Schembri with other clients. That explanation now rings hollow because we know the e-mails sent by his advisers, Nexia BT, identified him clearly.

Still, it would be nice if he could tell us if he sacked Nexia BT, which (according to him) gave him bad advice, sought to open bank accounts in his name without his permission and even confused him with another client. Does he plan to sue for malpractice? Or are they still his advisers?

Such questions show why the story is still alive. He began by treating us like insular idiots, who would swallow any explanation about the vast world beyond our ken. Then, he took a step back and lay low, until public anger ebbed, while the Prime Minister acknowledged there was something to be angry about.

Now, feeling safe, he’s moved on to phase three. He is a public servant but treats us, the ones he serves, like serfs. If he decides he’s answered enough questions, he won’t put up with any more. He doesn’t even pretend anymore that he owes us any explanation. Schembri never has.

When he was first appointed chief of staff, some public concern was raised about his business interests. We were told he had resigned from his executive positions and that he would be dedicated to public service. The Panama Papers suggest otherwise. They indicate someone actively seeking to expand his business interests, with assurances he could deposit up to a million dollars a year in the bank account he was seeking to open.

Of course, there might be some other explanation of the e-mails. But Schembri has refused to give it, refused to appear before the Pana committee in Malta and is unlikely to agree to appear before the committee anywhere, despite the committee’s request, a few days ago, for Muscat to put pressure on him.

However, even the little Schembri has said shows significant shifts. When the story first broke, Schembri accused Australia’s leading financial journalist, Neil Chenoweth, of mistakenly thinking the e-mails referred to him. He also said Chenoweth was part of a conspiracy, involving the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to destroy his character.

In writing to the Pana committee chairman, however, Schembri did not deny that the e-mails referred to him. He also invoked the ICIJ – previously accused of conspiring against him, remember – in his own defence. The ICIJ, he said, did not deem it relevant to the scope of its investigations to mention him in the release of its data.

Well, only if you eliminate Chenoweth, a distinguished member. And only if your definition of ‘scope’ is restricted to whether they put up a photo of you alongside Mizzi’s.

Schembri never tried to pretend he owed us any explanation. But, a year on, we can compare his behaviour with that of the Trump family in the White House.

Donald Trump, his children and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have been accused of treating the presidency like their own private business. A lot points in that direction. But even they, for all their power and arrogance, feel that they owe the public some explanations.

Meanwhile, the media are playing their part. They continue to point that the Trumps and Kushner have not divested from their family businesses. They continue to insist that the occupants of the White House should not treat voters as their customers but as their employers.

Here in Malta, however, we continue to behave like customers, even when our employees treat us like servants. They act like they’re the masters and we’re the serfs. If we let the story die, we’ll have gone along with it.

ranierfsadni@europe.com