PN billboard shows Labour’s men the door with telegraphic message

The Labour leadership is once again under pressure from a familiar call. It has already lost two ministers on investigations that revealed a lack of political judgement or good governance. Now the Opposition is sending it that telegraphic message once again: ‘Out’ – ‘Barra’, to Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and prime minister Joseph Muscat, as the Panama Papers revelations wreak havoc on the Maltese government.

Energy minister Konrad Mizzi is caught up in the revelations together with the PM’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, who in 2015 set up Panama companies to hide their beneficial ownership, as well as New Zealand offshore trusts managed by the trustees that ‘own’ their offshore Panama companies.

The PN’s new billboard raises the temperature for Labour, replacing the graphic that previously featured Konrad Mizzi’s own quip, “shame on you”, which he used to lay into finance minister Tonio Fenech in 2013 during a televised debate on Xarabank.

On Monday, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said that the explanations from Mizzi and Schembri for trying to set up bank accounts to link to their Panamanian offshore companies proved their intentions to hide money obtained through bribery or corruption.