There are five reasons at least to doubt the police commissioner’s mystification about the motive for Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.

A recent surge of police activity with investigations being brought to an end with arrests and arraignments, with drug raids successfully carried out, with resolution of oil smuggling cartels, with more police patrols on our streets and with changes in the top structures of the force are most welcome. The new police commissioner has started well.

As long as he can remain aloof and apart from the political decision makers, we can begin to hope that normality might one day return to our sick country.

The judicial and public inquiries that are going on are another sign of a return to normality. The revelations coming out of the Daphne public inquiry are deep and troubling. Yet, the lack of the threat of perjury in these sittings allows ministers, public servants, business leaders, accountancy firm directors, police and former police officers to get away with bouts of amnesia or with prepared stock answers sounding like carbon copies of the witnesses before them.

Still, what worries me and brings me back to put ink to paper has been the statement of the police commissioner that the motive behind Daphne’s murder remains a mystery to him.

All he has to do to is to go back to the moment the Panama Papers revelations were made public in Malta and to bring in all who were involved, by commission or by omission, in allowing the investigation into who was the real owner of Egrant to stall.

Because here lies the answer to the purpose of the murder but also to all the other misappropriation of national funds following those revelations and still going on today.

Had Karl Cini been forced to give witness and to reveal the contents of that fateful telephone Skype conversation with Mossack Fonseca, we would know who this company belonged to and the owners of the other two companies, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, would have lost their protection, been kicked out of office or lost their business together with the owner of Egrant itself.

Had the police seized the hard discs and all documents at Nexia BT’s offices and the partners’ homes as well as mobile phones of all involved, we might have saved Daphne. Interrogating all staff there and at Pilatus Bank as well as accessing the computers and phones of Mizzi, Schembri and Joseph Muscat, we might have got to the name of the owner of Egrant.

The judicial and public enquiries that are going on are another sign of a return to normality- John Vassallo

Had help from the FBI, Interpol or the Dutch police and Microsoft been used to seek the laptop that was used to Skype with Fonseca, Cini and Mossack Fonseca would have disclosed the owner.

But this did not happen. Why? The attorney general, the police, the FIAU and others did nothing. Who was pulling strings and ordering all to hold back? Protection was endorsed by a top authority or a power even higher than the top authority in Malta. Was Malta beholden to another country or to another dictator? Improbable. If a foreign dictator wanted to open a bank account in Panama or elsewhere to receive bribes, he did not need Malta and Nexia BT to do it.

I think it is not too late to put pressure on the five areas I have mentioned as potential holders of knowledge of the owner of Egrant.

The famous five are: (1) the head of the police and its financial crimes top officer at the time the Panama Papers became public; (2) the former attorney general; (3) the owner and partner of Nexia BT who made the incriminating Skype call; (4) the staff at Mossack Fonseca; and (5) the FIAU and the former minister of finance.

It is too late to save Daphne but there is still time to uncover the truth.

Mr Police Commissioner, your simplistic answer to the motive for Daphne’s murder can be illuminated if you follow this trail. Put your bloodhounds on the trail. Accept the US government’s offer of help. Trace the owner of Egrant and then a lot of the other actions of the Mizzi-Schembri deals concerning disposal of national assets and apparent bribery and fraud will be explainable. They were protected and believed they could act with impunity.

Their protection is now lost. Why they were protected for the previous seven years needs explaining. The motive for the murder might be much clearer.

Al Capone was finally imprisoned for tax avoidance but never punished for murders, prohibition crimes and protection rackets he ran. Punishing Mizzi and Schembri for money laundering will not exonerate you from your main task, which is to uncover the trail of the protection they enjoyed following the leak of the Panama Papers. Had these not been leaked we would never have even guessed what was happening.

And, as you go about this task, please uncover and charge all the other Panama account holders for tax evasion, money laundering or similar crimes as a deterrent to politicians and businessmen and businesswomen who are tempted to avoid declaring all their incomes and to start paying full tax on all their world income.

John Vassallo is a former ambassador to the EU.

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