News • 10 November 2002

MaltaToday urged by freemasons not to publish list

After last week’s special report on freemasons, the MaltaToday newsroom has been contacted by a number of Maltese freemasons concerned their names will be exposed in the newspaper.

MaltaToday has upheld the policy that unless a freemason is a public official or a public person in the news the newspaper would not divulge any of the names.

Though MaltaToday has also discovered that many individuals ion the list have left the freemason lodge, aware of the negative implications of the being a lodge member. One former member who was not active in politics but is a Nationalist councillor talked to MaltaToday about his experience in 1990.

In the meantime the newsroom is still attempting to contact three very well known lawyers who appear on the freemason list. It is not known if the individuals are still freemasons.

The freemason story was given more prominence in last Tuesday’s Bondi + where it was revealed that one of the teams’ investigators a certain Joe Zahra who was a former Lorry Sant henchman, had simply cooked up a story that he knew that politicians and ministers were freemasons.

Joe Zahra was obliged to admit that his conclusions were based on speculation.

During the programme, the editor of this newspaper Saviour Balzan confirmed that Magistrate Carol Peralta was still a freemason a month before being appointed a magistrate in 1990.

Yet this piece of information has not shaken Justice Mminister Austin Gatt who has continued to turn a blind eye to revelations made by this newspaper that when Carol Peralta was appointed magistrate in 1990 he was still a freemason.

Lou Bondi the host of the PBS programme has called on MaltaToday to publish the names of freemason even though he himself has only provided dubbed and smudged pictures of the secret filmings at the Marsamxett lodge in Valletta.