There are two aspects to the furore over Egrant-gate. The first concerns the allegations that have been made and the public and political reactions to them. And the second is their outcome.
The allegations are straightforward. Blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia, famous for first breaking the Panama Papers scandal in Malta and infamous for her pathological dislike of the Labour Party has long alleged that the so-called Third Man holding the Egrant account was the Prime Minister. This, she has asserted, explained his reluctance to remove Mizzi and Schembri from office, or to investigate them properly. So far, so conspiracy theory.
In a long-promised announcement to identify Egrant, she dropped the bombshell that this was none other than the wife of the Prime Minister, who had received a million dollars in her Dubai account transferred from the notoriously corrupt Azerbaijani ruling family. The blogger alleged that documents proving this would be found in the Pilatus Bank in Ta’ Xbiex, which held a “declaration of trust” in her name.
This was the culmination to a string of allegations made by the blogger over the last year. She has put together a compelling, but not watertight case based on circumstantial evidence and conjecture about corruption at the very highest levels of the Maltese government. Every credulous person in the Nationalist Party believes her.
Leader of the Opposition Simon Busuttil has embraced the blogger’s allegations wholeheartedly. Instead of adopting a circumspect stance – as most grown-up political leaders would do – and as a lawyer himself respecting the assumption that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, he seems convinced that each utterance from the blogger is the gospel truth. But the truth – especially when it is based on circumstantial evidence and disseminated by a blogger with an agenda – is rarely pure, and never simple.
It would be foolish to rush to judgment.
There is an understandable reason for Busuttil’s position. He knows that the only way he can unseat the Prime Minister at the next general election is by promoting the image of a corrupt man leading a corrupt government. Thus far in this story Busuttil has done so regardless of the merits of the hard evidence about the Prime Minister. Where is the smoking gun?
Busuttil may ultimately be proved right, but on present evidence he may be wrong. He is therefore ill-advised and misguided to pin his colours so unequivocally to that mast.
It has been speculated that in the event Muscat will claim that the allegations, or documents, were fraudulent. That response is unlikely to stand up to scrutiny
Worse, his talk of a “national emergency” and a constitutional crisis, his call for the President to “use her moral authority to tell the Prime Minister to step down” when he knows – or should know – the limitations placed upon her by our Constitution, is irresponsible grand-standing. To add that he “is putting his own life at risk” is melodramatic and demeaning.
Our country is being emotionally manipulated, divided and its economy imperilled by this high-stakes gamble for political advantage.
Busuttil has ratcheted up the temperature to the extent that normally sensible figures in public life are talking of a crisis in Malta’s financial services. It’s crucial to safeguard our financial sector, but there is a risk – as we see happening already – that unless the blogger produces the hard evidence to prove her case, Busuttil’s support for these allegations will be found to be built on sand.
The Caruana Galizia tail is wagging the Busuttil dog – not the most dignified or inspiring position for the Opposition leader to find himself in.
The news that the blogger’s ‘whistleblower’ has now testified is helpful. But if the evidence which this sad-sounding Russian woman submitted to the magistrate is as thin as her self-serving, rambling and loaded 3,000-word statement published by the blogger in the Malta Independent on Sunday of April 30, it does not give Busuttil the copper-bottomed evidence he, and the whole country, craves.
She stated: “I saw two declarations of trust with the name ‘Muscat’….The company name was Egrant Inc. This was before the Panama Papers, which broke into the news in April, so I had no idea of the significance of it. I quickly scanned those documents and returned them to the safe. I don’t know why I did it.. except that I knew I wanted to have something in case they tried to frame me.”
In a country where a fundamental cornerstone of the rule of law is that a person is innocent until proved guilty, Caruana Galizia contends, perversely, that “it is they [the PM and his wife] who should be proving their innocence”. It is contemptible that she seems content to dish the dirt, but unwilling to back it up with incontrovertible evidence when it is in the national interest she should do so.
In a mature democracy, what should happen to clear up the mess? The current magisterial inquiry should be given full and unfettered access by government to all those institutions that are known to have already enquired into the Panama Papers saga, but have not published their reports for reasons of confidentiality. The Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit and the Malta Financial Services Authority have a crucial role to play.
Their evidence to the magistrate should not be constrained by reasons of confidentiality. Transparency and complete openness should be the watchwords if Malta’s international reputation is to be salvaged from the wreckage. Only this can cleanse the stench of corruption hanging in the air.
It is the Prime Minister’s only course to rescue his tarnished reputation. If he does not, the current suspicion that he has things to hide will haunt him into the next election – as he was warned it would through his refusal to demand Konra Mizzi’s and Keith Schembri’s resignations when the story first broke. Despite Busuttil’s unfavourable poll ratings, Muscat will suffer the electoral consequences.
If the current magistrate’s inquiry – or any hard evidence belatedly produced by Caruana Galizia – proves the truth of the allegations she has made, there will be only one logical outcome to this whole sorry saga. The Prime Minister’s credibility will be in tatters and he must resign.
It has been speculated that in the event Muscat will claim that the allegations, or documents, were fraudulent. That response is unlikely to stand up to scrutiny. I am confident his own Cabinet, anxious to save their own skins in the forthcoming general election, would force him to go. They will calculate that with another 11 months before they have to call an election, there may be sufficient time to repair the damage against a Nationalist leader who appears weak and has failed to inspire sufficient support among a large number of swing voters.
This article was written before the election was called on Monday.