Watch the Prime Minister maneuvering his way around a series of questions this morning, and flatly lying to the journalists' faces.
He says they did not know that the man they flaunted as their consultant and who they sent to represent Malta as an envoy abroad was black-listed by the World Bank.
- So is he saying that we have a government who appoints envoys without making any background checks.
He then goes to say that the man has no contract with the Maltese government and was never paid by the Maltese government.
- Up till July the government itself was flaunting that he is the Maltese government's consultant on foreign direct investment, engaged by Malta Enterprise, and that he is being paid €6,000 for his services and has a letter of engagement. They also bluffed that he is Konrad Mizzi's consultant on energy projects. Check these two articles: link 1, link 2)
The Prime Minister also says that Nair was essential to set up a meeting with the Qatar Energy Minister.
- Diversion: Since when has our government been reduced to needing an intermediary to set up a government-to-government meeting?
He then says they did a 'due diligence' but it did not result that he was blacklisted by the World Bank for fraud and corruption.
- Who does the Prime Minister think he's kidding? A simple Google search would have shown this!
Is by any chance this 'due diligence' the same type of 'due diligence' test that they would be applying in selling Maltese passports? To people who aren't even obliged to be interviewed, who are not required to invest anything, who are not required to live here, who are not required to create jobs... but just required to pay in cash?
This is the same Prime Minister who this week lied in Parliament when he said that Nair was given a residence permit by the previous administration. Nair is British citizen, therefore as an EU citizen he required no permit to live in Malta.
This is the same Prime Minister who this week lied when saying that he never met Nair, when for the past five years he has been seen dining with him regularly.
He did say on Bondi+ prior to the election that "in politics you have to sometimes say the truth".
It seems that once again, this is not one of those times. We can't say that we weren't warned.
P.S. Someone also sent me this very relevant point:
"Muscat tripped up badly when he emphasised repeatedly, in and out of parliament, that Nair was 'strumentali' in making contact with Qatar.
Malta ALREADY has connections with Qatar. Qatar financed the evacuation and medical care here in Malta of the injured from Libya, and put money into humanitarian relief to Libya. They didn't do that in a vacuum and good relations between countries are not automatically terminated by a change in government, though they can sour very fast.
Muscat had to involve Nair in that meeting in Qatar. Make of that what you will as to who is working for whom."
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