We will not let sleeping dogs lie

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) this week highlighted the fact that journalists have faced consequences both in nations where media crackdowns are common and also in nations with reputations for high levels of press freedom for their reportage on the contents of the Panama Papers.

The Maltese media, thankfully, falls within the latter category but it has still been threatened and intimidated by those who we have exposed through the Panama Papers with lawsuits for having exposed the truth of their wheelings and dealings, which would never have seen the light of day had it not been for the somewhat fortuitous hack of the Mossack Fonseca email server last year.

Had that hack not come to pass, no one in Malta would have had any inkling of what one of the government’s lead ministers and the Office of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff had been up to – setting up companies in Panama, trusts in New Zealand and bank accounts linked to those companies – shortly after having taken office.

One’s blood curdles at the thought that these culprits would have gotten away with their grand designs had this newspaper and The Times not become media partners with the ICIJ and been given access to the Panama Papers.

One’s blood also curdles at the thought of so many other machinations that have certainly been contrived and acted out in the past without anyone being any the wiser.

Take the SwissLeaks case as an example. It was only decades later that the financial machinations of two former Nationalist ministers were revealed by this newspaper, again thanks to a partnership struck up with the ICIJ, which has provided such a sterling and priceless service to not only media outlets the world over, but also to the global fight for political accountability and transparency.

It may seem, especially to blinkered government acolytes, that we are flogging a dead horse here with our dogged determination to see that justice is done and that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is revealed. But the real truth of the matter is that this is any serious media’s very raison d’être.

The ICIJ also reports that Panama Papers disclosures have sparked at least 150 investigations in 79 countries around the world. And while the Maltese authorities have said that they are looking into the information, it seems that both Minister Konrad Mizzi and Chief of Staff Keith Schembri have been let off the hook by the Maltese authorities.

Meanwhile, it was hoped [and assumed] that, at some point, the police would have seen it fit to investigate the allegations against the minister and chief of staff. But according to the Police Force, there is no reasonable suspicion of any crime having been committed in the wake of the Panama Papers information leaks, as the Force had last informed this newspaper.

In fact, it seems, not even a single individual is to be investigated of the police’s own accord, although this does not mean that if another authority is, indeed, investigating the Panama Papers leaks that a police investigation may eventually be undertaken.

With the police seemingly unwilling to look into the Panama Papers for possible wrongdoing, what else is there to be done? We should eventually have the results of Dr Mizzi’s long-awaited two audits, which he apparently ordered back in February. One should not, however, hold their breath for anything salient to emerge from those quarters, for a number of reasons.

Those audits must certainly have been completed by now and while assuming there can be nothing criminal uncovered by those audits, given the blanket secrecy applied to such matters by the Panamanian fiscal jurisdiction, the government’s thinking must be that it is best to just let sleeping dogs lie and not stir the placid waters of summer by publishing those audits as promised. Or perhaps it is that no serious auditor would sign off on such an audit and give the minister the all-clear when a jurisdiction such as Panama, which prides itself on financial secrecy, is concerned.

The European Parliament’s Panama Papers committee will seek to interview Dr Mizzi next February. That Committee’s task will be to investigate alleged contraventions and maladministration in the application of Union law in relation to money laundering and tax avoidance and tax evasion. It will also look into how the current EU legislative framework is vulnerable to abuse and that people in positions of power have used loopholes to circumvent the safeguards put in place – particularly those relating to anti-money laundering laws.

All told, the way the government handled the whole Panamagate affair was a textbook case of burying one’s head in the sand until the storm blows over – to make some cosmetic moves, appear concerned about the situation but, in reality, to ignore it altogether until public interest dies out and it simply goes away.

What is most troubling about the whole affair is that the government failed a huge test in its accountability pledge, and many appear to have not even noticed. If there had been any will at all on the part of the government to tackle the abuses uncovered by the Panama Papers, there were plenty of ways in which it could have done that. But as we know by now, there was never any such will – only the will to close ranks, keep as quiet as possible and wait out the storm.

The media, and this publishing house in particular, will not let sleeping dogs lie and we will continue to press the subject until the whole truth comes out and justice is served.