With each passing day the Labour Party in government is slowly but surely letting their mask slip on several of those key points they vehemently promised and said they would fight for before the election.

Transparency and good governance are but two of these and yesterday’s revelations which came about with the the Panama Papers leak put a lot of needed pressure on this government to start respecting the general public’s intelligence and for the Prime Minister to step up to his role and ask for the resignation of Minister Konrad Mizzi and, if also implicated, his Chief of Staff, Keith Schembri.

The Minister for Health and Energy, Konrad Mizzi, was at the centre of Sunday’s leaks and he’s the one I’d like to focus on. Konrad Mizzi has been in the spotlight for quite some time now. The problem with his position is that he is the one responsible for signing deals costing Malta hundreds of millions of euros.

What makes the situation even more grave is that almost all of the mega deals signed by Minister Mizzi have never yet been published for public scrutiny. These include: 1) the terms of agreement with Shanghai Electric Power for the sale of 30% of Enemalta which also includes the sale of 95% of the BWSC plant, and probably also includes a power purchase agreement for Enemalta to buy the electricity produced by the BWSC plant (we don't know for sure as the contract has not been published, but it is highly unlikely that the Chinese would purchase a plant just to have it sit doing nothing), 2) the agreement for the gas-fired power plant with Electrogas which also includes the signing of a €360 million state guarantee to Electrogas together with a security of supply agreement committing Enemalta to buy all the electricity from the plant, 3) the agreement between Enel and Enemalta for the supply of electricity through the interconnector, - to say nothing about how this is to be managed by Enemalta which requires a maximum of 430MW during the peak summer hours, but which potentially has power purchase agreements with three companies totalling 550MW (will Enemalta choose the least cost option, to the benefit of the consumer, or will it be forced to buy expensive electricity from Electrogas?).

This is just the 'energy' part of his portfolio, as minister of health, he has signed deals selling off the Gozo General Hospital and St Luke's Hospital to Vitalis Health Care with declared but unknown provisions for the government to purchase services and "beds" from these 'privatized' hospitals.

In 2014, Mizzi was also found to have interfered with the fuel procurement at Enemalta, asking the board to choose Socar over other tenderers. This led to at least a reported €14 million in hedging losses, however seeing as the price of oil continued to crash throughout 2014 and 2015, the general public still has no idea about the kind of losses really suffered, but considering the volumes of oil purchased and the huge drop in market price, it is likely for the amount to be very much higher.

Of course since the hedging agreement with Socar Trading has not been published either (surprise) and since Enemalta Plc. has yet to publish its accounts - the last published accounts were back in 2012 - there is no indication about the real costs involved.

By not publishing these contracts, it doesn't automatically mean that there is some wrongdoing by Minister Mizzi, but Mizzi is exposing himself to critique about lack of transparency and bad governance. And in fact, there is no reason why anyone can blame the general public for feeling betrayed by a government who promised nothing but transparency. This coupled with the recent revelations will make anyone of sound mind concerned.

Even if nothing illegal took place, Konrad Mizzi is a minister of an EU democratic country. He should not only lead by example but make sure he is not embroiled in a situation which may question his morality

Even if nothing illegal took place, Konrad Mizzi is a minister of an EU democratic country. He should not only lead by example but make sure he is not embroiled in a situation which may question his morality.

The fact remains that Mizzi is mentioned in a list together with some very questionable people, who are very well known for their dictatorial conduct and utter disrespect for both rights and rules.

It is true that there are legitimate uses for offshore structures and it is also true that the papers reveal no sums of money going in or out of this structure for Mizzi at the time of these revelations but the fact remains that such structures should have never been set up in the first place because it is through such structures that many crooks and criminals hide their dirty money.

Furthermore, although leaked papers show no wrongdoing, this cannot be taken as a definite conclusion as these papers are not the complete story and the best that Mizzi can hope for is a judgement of "Not Proven" rather than the "Not Guilty" that he crowed about. Even if Mizzi wanted to use the offshore company in a legitimate way this would have made it unethical because of issues with tax evasion, in particular due to his choice of jurisdiction for his offshore company.

By taking possession of the Panama company and trying to hide it in a New Zealand trust, Mizzi left himself open to accusations of impropriety and of conflicts of interest, which were aggravated by the fact that he also left all this concealed.

The very fact that the papers reveal that he attempted to open bank accounts on Dubai and Panama and was unsuccessful there, although we do not know whether he was successful elsewhere,. and the fact that he reportedly declared to these banks that the purpose of these accounts was to facilitate payments for "management consultancy and brokerage services", by a Cabinet Minister let’s not forget, has raised serious doubts and many questions in the minds of all right thinking people (both PL and PN leaning) and as a minister he should have known to stay far away from such controversy.