Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1011650
19 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 AUGUST 2018 Egrant I just finished reading your extensive coverage of the Egrant saga including your interview with Michelle Muscat and Saviour Balzan's article 'Macbeth, the Lady etc.' and other contributors on the subject. All of these were rightly so, acknowl- edging the fact that our Prime Minister or his wife were not the beneficial own- ers of the said secret Panama company. So far so good. However, what has been really an- noying me since watching Muscat's press conference last Sunday when we all actually saw our Prime Minister in tears... is that he also stated that he cried at night with his wife over it and it was heart-breaking that he had to keep con- vincing his daughters that his mum and dad won't be going to prison. All the above is true and I can sympa- thise with our Prime Minister and his family but what escapes me and I can- not understand now after hearing and reading all the contributions about the matter is: why all the fuss? With all due respect to him and his wife, Muscat did not seem too bothered with Konrad Mizzi and his own Chief of Staff owning a secret Panama company (a known truth which they themselves admitted) which was exactly what they were being investigated for... whether they too had such a company. Why is it that nobody – including yourselves it seems – gives this line of reasoning its due importance? Delia mentioned it in your TV programme Xtra this week but I believe you should have given the issue much more impor- tance in your newspaper rather than making us feel sorry for the Muscats. This is the question you, as highly- respected non-affiliated journalists, should be asking. What about Konrad and Keith? Wilfred Privitera Sliema The publication of the Egrant Inquiry really sprang a surprise. I realised that those 50 pages were an encapsulated version of 1,500 pages. And here the plot begins to thicken. Common sense dictates that the best place for the inquiring magistrate to have begun was Nexia BT. It seems that the magistrate wasn't provided with suf- ficient documentation to be convinced that Egrant is really Brian Tonna's. So much so, that he resorted to that Dubai bank, and was snubbed by the authori- ties. Which really is no surprise, but more of that later. What is surprising is that the magis- trate didn't also turn to the Panamanian authorities, especially since the police there not only raided the offices of Mos- sack Fonseca, but drove the company into liquidation. The Panamanian authorities, in their frenzied efforts to try to salvage what's left of the country's reputation, would have been more inclined to help the authorities of another country, espe- cially since their own police brought about Mossack Fonseca's premature demise. The Panamanian authorities would have been more inclined to help the magistrate than those of Dubai were disposed to. How could Panama have helped? In MF's offices, sealed under police guard, sits Egrant not only gathering dust, but detailing all that is necessary to establish unequivocally whom it belongs to. Yes, it was a glaring omission not to have resorted to the Panamanian authorities. Malta had nothing to lose and every- thing to gain in the name of justice all round. The worst that could have hap- pened was to receive a second snub in the wake of Dubai's. And Malta's authorities would have been back to square one. But if full co-operation would have been forthcoming, then that report would have been unassailably conclusive and not one that raised more questions than it answered and bred only suspi- cions without allaying any. For that's what we now have: a quib- bler's fest. And the quibblers have al- ready started making merry. Joe Genovese Birkirkara On 1 August 2018, you stated ('Egrant inquiry…') that "Ferris, a former analyst at the FIAU, is understood to have told the magistrate that he had seen the $1 million transaction that was supposed to have been transferred to Egrant Inc from an Azerbaijan owned company." This is simply not true at all. Jonathan Ferris did not state thus neither to the magistrate nor to anyone else. He could not have stated thus as he was never privy to such information. Your reading of the report is clearly wrong or the information fed to you manipulated by your 'sources' in accord- ance with their agenda. Dr Jason Azzopardi, Dr Andrew Borg Cardona Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications