Three questions to the MFSA

In the aftermath of the MFSA Report clearing Bank of Valletta of insider trading in connection with the La Valette Multi Manager Property Fund, I would like to address the following questions to Chairman Joseph Bannister and Director-General Andre Camilleri in relation to the acquittal.

Question 1: Is it true or not that a most respected banker (with a double barreled surname) with long years of experience in investigations, previously working for the MFSA itself where he helped prop up the Compliance Dept. in the Investments and Securities Division until he went out on pension, was recalled by the MFSA to conduct this investigation, but had his assignment summarily terminated by Camilleri because BOV objected to him?

Question 2: Is it true or not that in the early stages of the investigation, MFSA investigations were on the right track in identifying close family members of BOV staff who had sold the La Valette Property investment upon being tipped off of the imminent brewing trouble at many underlying funds?  Furthermore, is it true that having recourse to the 2008 Electoral Register such shareholders were identified as living in the same household as BOV staff?

Question 3: Is it true or not that Finco Treasury Management had repeatedly brought to your attention in writing that the redemptions investigation had to start looking at sales from January 2008, rather than April 2008, since it was in January 2008 that Belgravia European Property Fund Financial Statements for financial year 2006 had been approved and published with shocking reverberations?

Finally, in my capacity as a Member of Parliament elected by the people, may I remind the MFSA that it is a public corporation financed by the taxpayer. It is not there to act in a cowardly manner and act as crutches for an old boys network in charge of a sinking ship.

It is not acceptable that the MFSA Chairman and Director-General lend themselves to be used by whoever suffers from the old school tie syndrome.

Citizens expect honest answers.

IWBs and Giovanna

The latest voice to join the chorus denouncing the Labour Party and Labour supporters as a bunch of morons and Luddites who know nothing about technology, was none other than that of Minister for Gozo Giovanna Debono who, nonchalantly, last Sunday declared "they [the Labourites] didn't even know what an interactive whiteboard is".

For the benefit of our readers, whatever their political leanings, we must explain what interactive whiteboards are Wikipedia (yes, we know what it is!) describes interactive whiteboards as "a large interactive display that connects to a computer and projector. A projector projects the computer's desktop onto the board's surface where users control the computer using a pen, finger, stylus, or other device. The board is typically mounted to a wall or floor stand."

The PN government has been buying and installing interactive whiteboards in Primary and Secondary Schools for the past few years. Nothing out of this world, as this technology is used in many other countries. So we're just at par, not ahead.

It's true that PN governments in the last decade or so did invest heavily in Malta's ICT. There are many success stories, and a future Labour government will surely continue building on them.

However, the Nationalist's biggest failure in ICT is the "biggest foreign direct investment in Malta" (their words), i.e. SmartCity Malta in Ricasoli.

In its political programme for the 2008 general election, GonziPN promised "At least 5,600 new jobs will be created in SmartCity". How many jobs have been created in what should be renamed as GhostCity? We invite our readers to go to Ricasoli and see for themselves.

When former Labour leader Alfred Sant said SmartCity was simply a real estate initiative he was jeered as a Luddite. Four years later some stone is there but the thousands of jobs promised by GonziPN are not.

SmartCity is the brainchild of Minister Austin Gatt, the bulldozing minister who rode the Arriva bus in a PR stunt before the service started last July and then dismissed the complaints of commuters angered by the shoddy service despite the promises.

It took a young university student to stand up to him publicly. It's the same minister who, on being questioned by journalists on his way out of a meeting at the PN headquarters recently, rudely replied they had "pissed". And when his ministry was salvaged by the Speaker's casting vote at the end of the motion of no confidence tabled by the Opposition after the public transport reform fiasco, he was cheered as a hero.

And let's not forget Education Minister Dolores Cristina, the minister responsible for providing the interactive whiteboards to schools, whose deep knowledge of this technology led her to stick around enough to cry and yet pick somebody else as a scapegoat for the EUPA's mishandling of EU funds that led to Malta's shameful suspension from the EU's educational programmes for two years.

Fortunately, Labourites and many citizens fed up with the arrogance of GonziPN won't need a computer, a smartphone, a tablet or anything "interactive" to vote this party government out. Simple, plain old technology: a pencil and ballot sheet will do.