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The jailing of a private investigator for two years after a magistrate found him guilty of fabricating a report in which he claimed there were irregularities in the allocation of the Mater Dei hospital equipment, has exposed a frame-up of the first order. In one stroke Joe Zahra managed to simulate an offence, fabricate evidence, spread false news and defame several persons.
That Joe Zahra is bad news has long been known, as is evidenced in the reportage and time line reported in the news pages.
During the compilation of the case it transpires that Joe Zahra had a private agreement with a Dutch tenderer. In the private contract with Joe Zahra Simed guaranteed a three per cent of the value of the tender if it ended up being awarded to them. Joe Zahra certainly did not work for peanuts!
The gravity of this case goes far beyond the harm caused to the previous minister of finance and foreign affairs John Dalli. There is much egg on the face of Simed, the Dutch tenderers who in the first place should never have commissioned such an investigation and certainly not through a non-licensed private investigator of dubious repute.
Particularly disturbing is the role played in this whole incident by the Prime Minister. It appears that when presented with this fictitious report by the legal representatives of the tenderer, the prime minister, rather than calling in his minister and demanding an explanation, on the advice of the attorney general simply passed on the report to the police to start their investigations. In so doing he knowingly or unknowingly gave the impression that he believed the contents of the report. Before and in the interim period, the rumour and spin mill started doing the rounds, aided and abetted by local journalists in the full knowledge and encouragement of a coterie of politicians and their cohorts. According to recent press reports, all of this took place without John Dalli even knowing that he was being investigated, until a journalist eventually informed him some two months after resigning from Cabinet.
The reporting of the court judgment has also been somewhat surprising. The Nationalist Party organ In-Nazzjon simply states that a Joe Zahra was imprisoned for damaging the authorities. Not even a mention of the former foreign and finance minister by name. A story in this newspaper today quotes the prime minister as stating that the Joe Zahra case had nothing to do with the resignation of the former finance minister. Then what has led to his resignation? Surely it is in the public interest for the prime minister and the former minister to spill the beans and reveal what was the cause of the resignation. The popular belief was that the Zahra case was the catalyst of the resignation, something that the prime minister is now denying. In view of the prime minister exculpating the minister from any wrongdoing in the Iranian shipping case, what is the reason for the resignation? The people have the right to know.
The Nationalist media has hailed this court judgment as a vindication against the bad publicity of the Labour press. This beggars belief, as the party is fully aware of the campaign it ran against one of its own. To now hail this as a party vindication rather than a vindication of a former minister is a bit rich. This case was all about the wrongdoing of Joe Zahra, now committed to a prison sentence. Prior to this judgment all and sundry were under the impression that this case and the veracity of the evidence of Joe Zahra was the direct cause of the resignation. The prime minister denies any link. Even on the level of compassion and humanity towards a former colleague, the prime minister owes the people an explanation.
The former minister too should speak up and explain exactly what led to the resignation. The truth about Joe Zahra’s fabrications has surfaced, people would now like to hear the truth and nothing but the truth from both the prime minister and the former foreign and finance minister.
Finally it must be said that this was a lost opportunity for the prime minister to close a chapter, welcome a judgement that vindicated his former colleague and start a new working relationship with John Dalli – in the overriding interests of his own party that stands to gain from unity – the most important ingredient to winning an election.
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