One Hundred Doubts Do Not Make A Single Proof, But They Fuel My Thirst To Know More
The publication of the summary of the Egrant inquiry in the past few days was big news. I had been waiting for its outcome for many months. Probably you did too.
I waited for the Egrant inquiry because I am driven by a burning desire for justice. I thank my family for imbuing me with a sense of what is right and what is wrong, my educators over the years and crucially my legal training. Over time, my personality and my legal training became intertwined.
I grew up in an environment where it was paramount to say what is right and what is wrong. More importantly, it is important to try my hardest to do what is right. I must admit, I fail many times. Each time I fail, I try again.
We are a lucky nation. We are a small community that is tightly knit. We care for one another. I am proud to be Maltese.
Panama Papers shook me to the core. I never thought people in power could do things that amount to a breach of the bond of trust between citizen and their representative. I felt – and still feel – cheated.
It was thanks to the hard work of the media in Malta that I keep myself informed on what is happening, and, fundamentally, what people are thinking.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was the first person to break Panama Papers in Malta. This was followed up by the independent press. They all did and continue doing a great job.
Joseph Muscat tears up as he addresses his children after the Egrant findings
Daphne Caruana Galizia did not simply stick to reporting. She shared her views. I appreciated her for this. She challenged my thinking. Sometimes I agreed, other times I disagreed. She was however someone whose views I would take notice of.
Nobody can deny that Caruana Galizia took top spot when it came to following up on Panama Papers, reporting on the players involved, and ultimately seeking to find out who Egrant’s real owner is. This is what a top journalist does.
Obviously, Caruana Galizia was a human being. This means she was fundamentally imperfect, like I am. If I ever met her, I would have told her how I would have loved if she applied her investigative skills and brilliant writing to the Nationalist Party too, for example.
Her murder killed me. Nobody deserves to be murdered, let alone for being a thinking being. On the day of her murder, my belief that Malta is a fundamentally good society was rattled. I did not sleep that night. Who hijacked our community? How did we degenerate so fast?
I have asked myself and keep on asking myself: What is my role as a citizen of Malta?
I live away from Malta. I am proud to be in the United Kingdom but I feel a strong emotional bond to Malta. Now, more than ever.
The publication of the summary into the Egrant inquiry heightens my emotional connection to Malta. It was thanks to the publication of the Egrant story that I became more active in sharing my views and applying my skills towards achieving accountability, transparency and ultimately justice. So I owe it to Daphne for getting active and I thank her for it.
I got myself involved in researching the Egrant Exposed series for Lovin Malta together with Chris Peregin and a group of other people. This was a great experience. It brought me back to the days when Chris and I ran a student newspaper at university in Malta.
It was during those long nights filled with adrenaline and excitement reviewing documents for the Egrant Exposed series that I formed a view I was peering into a highly ambiguous structure. The documents were simple, yet the potential answers were endless.
We tried our hardest to get to the bottom of it all. Today, I still think that the documents prepared for Egrant, more precisely the two documents assigning the subscription rights to bearer, are of a highly ambiguous nature. I wonder why a company destined to spend its entire life on a shelf had such a big hole poked in its structure.
It seems to me that Mossack Fonseca were fully aware of the potential for endless ambiguity of the structure: When Nexia BT partner Karl Cini emailed Mossack Fonseca asking them to issue a declaration that Dubro and Aliator (two Mossack Fonseca companies) did not declare any trust for Michelle Muscat, the law firm responded that it could not issue such declaration.
Probably Mossack Fonseca could not certify they never signed a declaration of trust because the only person who could ever declare a trust was the holder of the two certificates that assign the subscription rights of Dubro and Aliator to bearer. We do not know who the person holding on to the certificates was.
Brian Tonna published these certificates to prove Egrant belongs to him
I have a lot of sympathy for magistrate Aaron Bugeja who looked into the story, at the request of the Prime Minister. Deep down I knew he faced a nearly impossible task in trying to determine with sufficient legal certainty who is the owner of Egrant. In truth, you probably can’t. It is a puzzle that will probably never give any straight answer, no matter how much you probe. We are dealing with the dark underbelly of the financial system.
I was surprised when the magistrate determined that the document which we all call the ‘declaration of trust’ is a fake. In reality, the document is not a declaration of trust as it does not create a trust but is a piece of paper that acknowledges the existence of a trust. These are two different things legally. We did not review the so called ‘declaration of trust’ as part of the Egrant Exposed series.
The determination that the ‘declaration of trust’ is a fake however only serves one purpose: In legal terms, it nullifies the value of the document before a court. Therefore it cannot be presented in court proceedings as it has no value. A court would simply state ‘this is a fake therefore I cannot rely on it’.
“Deep down I knew [Bugeja] faced a nearly impossible task in trying to determine with sufficient legal certainty who is the owner of Egrant”
The magistrate’s report brings some certainty. The report is clear: legally there is no hard evidence – at this stage – linking Egrant to any owner. This conclusion, summed up in the poetic ‘a hundred doubts do not make a single proof’, led the magistrate to answer the key question posed to him in the negative: No, it does not appear that Michelle Muscat is the ultimate beneficial owner of Egrant.
Therefore I will not question the report nor its author. The magistrate set out to find out information and is reporting back, in the negative.
Neither will I say that the story we call ‘Egrant’ was a pack of lies. There appear to be a number of inaccuracies in the reports published by Daphne Caruana Galizia – this was stated by the magistrate. However, fundamental elements check out. For example, the use of Pilatus Bank by the Azeri ruling elite as its piggy bank has been confirmed. So I view the story as inconsistent: On the basis of evidence obtained so far, the story is factually correct in some respects, factually incorrect in others.
“An inconsistent story means it is an unfinished story. The Egrant story is waiting for someone to pick it up and take it across the finish line.”
An inconsistent story means it is an unfinished story. The Egrant story is waiting for someone to pick it up and take it across the finish line.
The findings set out in the summary to the magisterial inquiry also raise a number of questions that we need to address.
Was the story published really because Daphne Caruana Galizia wanted to be part of a so-called ‘frame-up for power’? I find this claim exaggerated. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a journalist. Yes, she had an editorial line, that was clear. Yes, her editorial line overlapped politically with the political agenda of the Nationalist Party many times, that much we can say too. Power however was not part of Caruana Galizia’s editorial line. Media is not in the business of dealing with power. That is the job of politics.
How should the media deal with the fallout from the summary of the Egrant inquiry? I detect a sense of embarrassment in the media for having done its job. There is a bright side and a darker side to this embarrassment. The bright side is that the media is aware of its responsibilities. The darker side is self-censorship. On balance, the duty to keep the public informed should always win.
The media should also work more frequently together. The biggest stories were always uncovered when bright journalists from different outfits pooled resources and shared a common mission: the truth. The Watergate scandal and Panama Papers are the best examples. Sadly, Maltese journalism is split in different fiefdoms and has conflicting allegiances. This is holding us back from knowing the truth.
The publication of the summary of the Egrant report has repercussions on civil society too. I am really proud to see a growing civil society sector in Malta. This shows there are committed citizens, which can only be a good thing for democracy. Since Daphne’s murder, I have found myself more intellectually at ease in certain parts of the world of Maltese civil society. We have lessons to learn that we need to apply in our activism: We cannot jump to conclusions. We cannot let our passion for our republic come in the way of dispassionate method. Our republic is further strengthened by thinking citizens. We need to ask more questions and shout less names.
“Sadly, politics seemed to be the only place in Maltese society not to have stopped a single second to think”
But, perhaps, the biggest revelation of the summary of the Egrant inquiry is for politics. For years, politicians have propagated a culture of black and white. Our politicians are masters of oversimplification and promoters of a winner-takes-all mentality. When faced with the Egrant story, one party reacted by calling it the ‘biggest lie in Malta’s political history’ while on the other hand another party claimed they were ‘convinced’ that Egrant belonged to the prime minister. With hindsight, both approaches were exaggerated. Worse, the political discourse drowned out any space for independent action and thinking, which should have come in the form of independent institutions doing their job and more investigative journalism.
Sadly, politics seemed to be the only place in Maltese society not to have stopped a single second to think. One side is marching to the shouts of ‘frame-up’, the other is acting like a baby throwing its toys out of a pram in order to recover a credibility it thinks it has lost but that probably in reality it never had.
There are deeply personal lessons to be drawn from the publication of the summary of the Egrant inquiry too. As a community, we entrenched ourselves in opposing camps. There was (and remains) no space for thinking. We need to stop this. It is hurting us.
I want to learn these lessons and improve. I will continue to argue for transparency and truth. We are seeing only a small bit of the magistrate’s report – we need to see the entire report. We deserve to know. Justice in the wake of the Panama Papers is far from being delivered.
One hundred doubts do not make a single proof. But they fuel my thirst to know more.
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