PN closed its eyes as corruption and fraud continued

If proof was needed that the Nationalist Government’s position on corruption is weak and primitive, then the special report in today’s edition of this newspaper can be described as just that.

The report describes how the late Labour minister Lorry Sant and his henchmen masterminded ‘illicit’ bank loans and defrauded individuals until 1994.

Better still, one of the banks was Mid-Med Bank, a bank which had been defrauded of thousands by the same individuals under a Labour administration in the eighties.

Today, MaltaToday confirms how Lorry Sant forcibly asked a long-suffering individual to acquire loans from banks without any security. The individual was issued a handsome loan for plots which belonged neither to him nor to his interlocutor and which were subject to a prohibitory injunction. Lorry Sant and Piju Camilleri were later presented with the loan in cash instalments or by cheque.

Worse still, before and after the death of Lorry Sant, the Nationalist Government refused to react to the plea of those individuals who had been willing to talk of the corruption and who lived in constant fear of reprisals.

So much so that two individuals who decided not to concede to pressure from individuals such as Piju Camilleri were on the receiving end of several home-made bombs. And the last of these bombs detonated in 1996.

Yet despite mounting and indisputable evidence linking Piju Camilleri and Lorry Sant to countless shocking events involving the illegal sale of land, the issue of permits and mysteries related to individuals such as the late Lino Cauchi, the police could only produce useless paperwork and not much else.

Unbelievably, over the past weeks, the MaltaToday team has amassed data and facts on a plethora of judges, magistrates, lawyers, notaries, businessmen and politicians who appear to have been involved in this network of corruption and deceit.

Unfortunately many of the honest citizens who bought property from these corrupt individuals may now find themselves in a crisis, since their property could very well revert to its original owners, due to massive organised fraud on the part of Lorry Sant’s henchmen.

Yet, despite the gravity of the news story, investigative TV journalists and newspaper columnists have chosen to steer clear of it, leaving the topic to the singular actions of the MaltaToday team.

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Editorial

Special report