The courts, not Facebook will decide if Schembri is guilty

After months of waiting and speculation, Keith Schembri was finally taken to court and arraigned yesterday.

No, this was not about his links to the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case, where he is alleged to have leaked information to suspected mastermind Yorgen Fenech.

It was not about the Panama Papers, or his Panamanian company’s alleged link to Yorgen Fenech’s 17 Black.

It was not about the many cases of alleged political corruption that he has been linked to.

Schembri was charged in court over the findings of a magisterial inquiry over allegations of money laundering involving him and the former managing director of Allied Newspapers, Adrian Hillman.

The inquiry, requested by former Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil, looked into claims that Schembri had passed on €650,000 on to Hillman through regular €5,000 payments between 2011 and 2015.

The claims did not come out of thin air. No, they were part of a leaked report compiled by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit – the state entity tasked with investigating money laundering.

As always, we must allow justice to run its course. It is up to the courts to decide whether Schembri is guilty or not of the crimes he stands charged with.

But the lengthy Facebook post Schembri uploaded on Thursday merits to be analysed on its own.

In the social media post, uploaded after months of silence, Schembri did not deny that the inquiry has recommended police action – he couldn’t possibly do that.

Instead, he attacked the integrity of the inquiry and the presiding magistrate. He claimed that he was being persecuted for being part of Joseph Muscat’s Labour. He said that the conclusions of the inquiry were “guided by a hidden hand intent on damaging the government and the party.” He also dragged his own family into the argument, claiming that they are also being persecuted.

In his 1,400-word rant, Schembri continued to play the game the PL has been playing for the past decade and tries to blame everything on the PN – as if he has forgotten that we have a Labour government, have had one for the past eight years, in fact.

He also launched a scathing attack at one of the court experts – a person who also happened to be part of the Egrant magisterial inquiry. Now excuse us for pointing out Kasco’s double standards, but Schembri had not come out against the same expert then, nor had he attacked the findings of the Egrant inquiry. The reason is obvious – the conclusion of that particular inquiry was to his, and his former boss’ liking, unlike this one.

“I have major reservations about the conclusions of the inquiry. Reservations not only because the conclusions are wrong, but also because I believe that they were not made by coincidence,” Schembri said.

The thing is, his friend and former boss Joseph Muscat told us on more than one occasion that he trusts the integrity of the justice system. Schembri is making some very serious allegations here and, if he has any proof that the justice system is being warped to serve some form of personal vendetta against him, he should bare all.

Schembri linked the investigation and subsequent prosecution to his relationship with the Labour Party - the same party that kicked him out a few months back.

He is basically saying that, under a Labour government, a judge is trying to put him in jail for having been part of the Tagħna Lkoll movement.

We expect the PL to distance itself from Schembri once again, just like many of his former backers did individually yesterday.

Prime Minister Robert Abela has said that the rule of law is strong in Malta, with an independent judiciary and a functioning justice system. Now that Schembri is saying the opposite and claims that he is being punished solely for being a Labourite, we would expect some sort of reaction from Abela, the Justice Minister and the PL.

And while we’re at it, we expect that justice is not only done in this particular case but also in all cases in which Schembri was embroiled. These include, the claims that he was more powerful than Malta’s Prime Minister, as claimed by some current Cabinet members, his role in shady government deals that have cost the taxpayer millions of euro, his close ties to Yorgen Fenech, the information he was allegedly leaking from the police investigation to help his friend and the mobile phone used to speak to Fenech in the hours leading to his arrest, which remains missing to this very day.