Bad Passion Week for Pilate

It was the week when the Passion Week symbolism caught up with Malta’s present with a vengeance. The culprit, of course, was Pilate, or rather Pilatus – better known for washing his hands or now washing or laundering money.

People who go to watch the Good Friday processions will see many Pilates march by, but the Pilate that was prominent in last week’s events is quite another Pilate – Ali Sadr the owner of the locallybased Pilatus Bank who is being arraigned for transgressing sanction laws and money laundering faces up to 125 years in prison if found guilty.

The news that hit Malta in the early hours of Wednesday rocked the country, forcing the government to go fiercely on the defensive and giving fresh impetus to those who saw Daphne Caruana Galizia being vindicated.

The government spinners played around with various ploys. These include Edward Zammit Lewis’ preposterous claim that Ali Sadr’s famous luggage which he carted away in the middle of the night contained just his clothes, and that the US investigation was about Ali Sadr, and not Pilatus Bank. Pilatus Bank applied to be registered in Malta under the PN administration approved by a PN-appointed MFSA board (this by the Prime Minister squirming to deflect the attack). And so on and so forth. We all know how the government machine goes into overdrive when it finds itself with its back to the wall.

The chickens are coming home to roost. The wheels of justice may turn somewhat slowly in the US, and may be rather selective at that, but this was a question of evading sanctions on a hostile country – Iran – and the US does not forget. It also has the means to find out, as has recently happened with a Latvian bank, as I wrote recently, which ultimately forced the Latvian government to take action. I also wrote that the EU, for various reasons, does not have the investigative power or the Member States the will to give power to the ECB.

But all this may be changing. The FBI is on its way to Malta. The European Banking Authority is carrying a preliminary investigation in Malta and the ECB was asked to investigate Pilatus Bank.

And after a day of high tension, the afore-mentioned MFSA board issued a series of directives – it stripped Ali Sadr from any position within the bank, as well as voting rights, and banned the bank from any transactions including withdrawals and deposits. It has been argued that MFSA/the government should have stripped the bank of its banking licence but I believe there is a procedure to do this and the rule of law must be followed – though in Latvia the bank in question was fined.

Again, with many others I was nonplussed by some of the MFSA’s other directives, which regarded shareholders but not the bank’s customers and clients. Some have said these directives seem tailor-made to safeguard the clients, some of whom are well known to the government.

The whole issue begs the question as to why the bank was not more strictly overseen despite the many allegations that surfaced, the ongoing US investigation and the FIAU reports discarded by the authorities.

Nor can I understand the government’s current enthusiasm to turn Malta into the Bitcoin capital of the world. The reason why other countries are moving slowly, if not being outright sceptical on this issue, is precisely because Bitcoin can promote anonymous capital flows and possibly money laundering when what Malta really needs is to persuade the world it is a reputable jurisdiction. Contrary to what the government seems to think, the fact that a huge Chinese bitcoin operator decided to relocate to Malta is not good news at all when it was discovered it had left China because the Chinese regulators are too strict.

In the meantime, the current state of political discourse in our country keeps coming up with the week’s list of anti-heroes. Such as:

PN deputy leader David Agius, who, in the absence of his leader snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when he cut short a sober and keen discussion on Ali Sadr’s arraignment saying that the Minister of Finance had misled the House when he claimed that he did not know of the MFSA decision. It was later proved that in an era of instant communication emails could be sent to MPs without paper communication.

The Minister of Finance himself for his weak-kneed response when the news was still fresh and he was besieged by journalists wanting to know his reaction.

Edward Zammit Lewis as already explained.

PN maverick Edwin Vassallo for a speech in which he mixed up the Our Lady of Sorrows devotees with pro-abortion supporters, the cleaners of Daphne’s memorial, and so on.

And of course Jason Micallef who was forced to inaugurate the underground cistern in front of the Law Courts yesterday with Daphne’s memorial in the background despite the clean-up and a sort of hoarding in between.