A step closer, but miles away

As the news broke of the freezing of assets of Keith Schembri, Brian Tonna and others, we need to take a step back and realise that the information that led to this action has been in the public domain for at least three years.

On 24 April 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia had published a post entitled ‘BREAKING/Prime Minister’s chief of staff took kickbacks from Brian Tonna on sale of Maltese citizenship’. In that post, as the title describes, she detailed fact upon fact about how Schembri had received kickbacks from Tonna on the sale of citizenship.

The ball, you could say, was in the Attorney General’s court. Action could and should have been taken. Instead, we all know what would happen. Nothing.

No prosecutions. No investigations. Schembri would remain a key figure in disgraced former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s “Kitchen Cabinet” and Tonna’s Nexia BT would feature in many a government contract or consultancy until yesterday.

And Daphne Caruana Galizia would be murdered.

“I know through police sources that they have evidence already. But it’s the prime minister’s chief of staff, so they’re not going to touch him,” Caruana Galizia had written in response to a comment by one of her readers.

Reading this comment by Caruana Galizia has a spine-chilling effect. It thunders from beyond the grave and reverberates in our heads. There you have it. She knew that publishing these facts would not be enough. She knew that the police would do nothing with this evidence.

She was one of the few who were aware at the time of the system of impunity that was already in place. By then, institutions had already been bent into submission. The saga was only about to begin.

Action by the police at the time might have prevented the disastrous vortex that was to follow.

This is how the lying lowlife scum reacted at the time:

Keith Schembri’s reaction when #DaphneCaruanaGalizia revealed the suppressed FIAU report on the #GoldenPassport kickbacks to Keith Schembri back in April 2017 is so telling. pic.twitter.com/5HjblPhofY

— BugM (@bugdavem) September 21, 2020

Caruana Galizia began to die that night. She did not have to, but the nation was too blind to realise the possible consequences of this kind of revelation. Blinded by partisan bickering and by government propaganda the people would only serve to allow further institutional breakdown.

And murder.

This is what justice for Caruana Galizia is also about. We are a long way from that yet.

Follow Jacques Rene Zammit on his blog J’Accuse.