An ice bucket for our democracy

I would imagine that everyone has other things on their mind in this wonderful, humid, silly, ice bucket frenzy Maltese summer. And if you do not mind me saying, this idea of a slowdown in the middle of August is getting rather impossible and unfashionable. 

I simply cannot look the other way after the revelation of the contents of a police investigation into the taxpayer’s buyout of the debt amassed by two men, Neville Curmi and Mario Camilleri, who were supposed to run Café Premier in Valletta.

That the police investigation was held when Peter Paul Zammit was Commissioner of Police mocks the aim of any investigation.

Yes, a shameless, scandalous sham.

The investigation failed to look into the bizarre €210,000 ‘commission’ for one of the directors that was part of the €4.2 million buyout. At least that is the official version. 

Why the director should get a ‘commission’ after getting the company debt erased beats me.

It also shows that the two directors, who run other successful businesses with high turnovers and profits, were unwilling to transfer payments and pay their bills, and instead called on the government to bail them out.

Now just in case you do not recall, MaltaToday had learnt that the deal was reached by a certain Mario Camilleri, as a representative of M&A Investments – a shareholder in Café Premier lease owner Cities Entertainment – and architect John Sciberras, a former director-general of the Lands Department who was medically ‘boarded out’ in 2008, but now miraculously serves as a consultant at the Office of the Prime Minister.

According to the police investigation, it turns out that Cities Entertainment were trying to sell off their government lease on the market due to business losses and outstanding rental arrears. An agreement was reached with Sciberras, as consultant at the OPM, to have the government take the premises back and cancel executive letters ordering Cities Entertainment to pay its arrears.

In the agreement, the Lands Department accepted to pay nearly €4.2 million to Cities Entertainment to allow it to pay back all its dues to the State – rent, income tax, utility bills, VAT, even bank loan arrears – but also factored in a €210,000 payment for M&A Investments.

€210K works out at 5% and if I were the police investigating the case, I would have asked some very pertinent questions.

Let me for a moment focus on government interlocutor John Sciberras. He was boarded out in 2008. Boarded out, by the way, is when someone is found medically unfit to continue in his duties and is given an early pension. The truth is that at the time the minister responsible for Lands, Dr Jason Azzopardi, did not have much faith in Mr Sciberras. So it seems Mr Sciberras took the semi-honourable exit and was boarded out. It would be interesting to meet the medical board members who boarded him out, to discuss the dynamics of that decision.

Why Azzopardi did not have faith in Sciberras is an interesting question, to which I have no answer.

Suddenly Mr Sciberras was boarded out and no longer remained Director General of Lands. He now walks the streets of Valletta and from the looks of it is back in good health and shape and he is also a special consultant at the Office of the Prime Minister. Miracles, my mother always said, never cease to happen.

Now the last time I had the pleasure of seeing and listening to Mr Sciberras, he was testifying in the Jumbo Lido case. A case which was heard by two magistrates and as everyone now knows left Simon Busuttil’s dear and close friend Peter Fenech €18,000 richer and his lawyer €7,000 happier. 

The police, I imagine, should have quizzed Mr Sciberras. At least I would ask him why he was so much in favour of seeing the debt amassed by Neville Curmi, a successful stockbroker, and Mario Camilleri, a successful businessman, erased forever using public tax money. And why did Sciberras not entertain the idea of asking these mega rich businessmen to settle their debt using their personal assets?

He would have answered that the government wanted the place back. But is that the truth?

Did the police ask how Mr Sciberras met Mr Camilleri or Mr Curmi?

Mr Sciberras’s timely advice led to the settlement of the situation as follows:

1. €307,346 to the government property division;

2. €504,000 in capital gains tax;

3. €192,748 to the Inland Revenue Department to settle income tax and social security payments;

4. €227,058 to the VAT Department on outstanding dues and legal procedures against the company;

5. €130,963 in energy bills for ARMS;

6. €2,560,800 to Banif Bank;

7. €3,265 to creditors Golden Harvest;

8. And, of course, the €210,000 as ‘commission’.

Former parliamentary secretary Michael Farrugia had offered us the absurd excuse that the deal was struck to safeguard the National Library. It was of course a flimsy excuse for a scandalous pay out.

The questions that one raises about such a deal are several.

I am sure that the Maltese police felt very uncomfortable with putting questions to the two men (allow me NOT to call them businessmen) knowing all too well how many individuals have been faced with the dire consequences of not paying bills or loans.

In such situations, normal people who do not have the luxury of whiling away time by walking up and down Republic Street at leisure, usually are faced with:

1)   criminal procedures by the VAT department over late payments;

2)   blacklisting by banks for defaulting on loan repayments;

3)   having electricity and water suspended while bills remain unpaid;

4)   criminal procedures by the Income Tax department;

5)   Or worse, some nasty expletives when failing to deliver on private payments

Peter Paul Zammit should have asked why Sciberras was so enthusiastic about reaching such a deal with the men who ran this badly managed and failed business. 

And why he even accepted that part of the deal would include an agreement to pay 5% of the €4.2 million as ‘commission’ to one of the directors.

If I were the police I would call Mario Camilleri back in and question him over this ‘commission’.

I would even look at any transactions that Mr Camilleri could have made. I am not suggesting anything, I am just telling the friggin police how to do their bloody job.

And if I were the police I would call Mr Sciberras back too. And I would ask some pertinent questions. Which I am sure are so bloody obvious that even my pet hamster could mumble something and put forward some words in the form of a question.

The people reading this article care about what happens to their tax money. The people who do not read this column are probably so taken up with their lives that they have lost hope of believing in anything. They usually watch ice bucket videos on Facebook and laugh to forget about how seriously shameful this world has become. 

Worst of all, those normal folk who have cash flow problems and have a downturn in their business, do not have the fortune of discovering a benevolent government or bumping into a Mr Sciberras along Republic Street.

Today’s editorial talks of a government that was elected on the premise of offering a different way of doing things. 

If the Jumbo Lido was a scandal, this is a mega scandal. 

And it goes to prove that our political class and institutions are unworthy of our respect.

Yes, unworthy of respect.

If this administration under Joseph Muscat had any self-respect he would not wait for the Opposition to raise the matter, he would call an investigation that would not include his consultants and look into the matter.

And if the Opposition had any sense, they would raise hell.

This government genuflects whenever it is faced with a person who calls himself a businessman. Anyone who drives his business into a €4.2 million debt hole is not a businessman but a failed businessman. A truck driver caught sleeping at his wheel loses his licence; in Malta a businessman who defaults and implodes finds the government to bail him out and reinstate him.

This shameful investigation also highlights the inadequacy and incompetence of the police. In the last months, I have passed on information about errant police officers and more information about the oil scandal. And the reaction and response from the police has been resoundingly impressive for being nothing, nothing as in nix, zilch and zero.

Our institutions, from Muscat’s government to the judiciary, are letting the people down and in spite of our imperfect ways and editorial slant I really believe that the media, the independent and semi-independent media are the only safeguard to our 50-year-old democracy.

It is a democracy dominated by cronyism and shortcomings, crowned by the philosophy that whom you know and what they can do for you is what is important, not what you are good at.

Really, if there is someone who needs some charity in all this ice bucket frenzy, it is our democracy, which has turned into one big circus.