Robert Abela was part of various government rackets when he pretended to serve as a consultant to Joseph Muscat while raking in another salary on top of the hundreds of thousands of Euros for pretending to be a lawyer to the Planning Authority and other public entities. He was primarily part of the racket of Labour Party lawyers who provided over-priced services to the government for jobs they mostly didn’t do. Others in this racket included Charlon Gouder and today’s Justice Minister Jonathan Attard.
Another racket in which Robert Abela was involved was the insider-trading racket at the Planning Authority where insiders like him, benefited from inside information they were only privy to with regard to permits. Under Joseph Muscat’s government, the Planning Authority was ripe with corruption which gradually was legalised by the legal reforms drawn by Robert Musumeci: laws which benefited himself.
What probably is most alarming in today’s historical circumstances is that Robert Abela was previously part of a racket of government insiders who directly benefited from the Maltese passport sales. Daphne Caruana Galizia had revealed that Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna of Nexia BT were receiving bribes for selling passports to Russian individuals and one of these Russians who paid a bribe for his passport is the same Evgeny Filobokov who rented out Robert Abela’s villa in Żejtun. Surprisingly, his name wasn’t mentioned in the Times of Malta interview and I suspect it is because the interviewer didn’t want to make the Prime Minister feel uncomfortable.
So, if Evgeny Filobokov got his Maltese passport by paying a bribe to Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna, how did he end up renting the villa of the consultant of the Prime Minister? Well, the connection seems to be obvious, isn’t it? Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri ran a racket that directly benefited from the buyers of Maltese passports and extracted value out of this racket by allocating rentals. A fat racket by sleazy politicians who rubbed shoulders with rich people in search of some grease.
Today, Malta is the only country in the EU along with Hungary which is demanding Ukraine cede land to Russia for the sake of peace and a trade relationship with Russia while at the same time refusing to offer solidarity to Ukraine on a basic political level in EU fora, case in point with sanctions and trade. Theoretically, his views on Russia may have not been influenced by past dealings with Russians, but Robert Abela has an insular mentality and a pedestrian intellect. Given that Robert Abela’s insular worldview is based on his very limited personal experience he may feel genuinely in favor of trading with the Russians due to his positive experience. For one to understand what I am saying, one has to keep in mind Robert Abela’s village mentality.
This is of course a gross tragedy: that during a time when we seriously need a statesman to build a nation in a vastly changing geo-political world, we are being held back by a man whose worldview is based on his petty village experiences.
Excellent piece. Well said