Ghost minister!

The Sunday Times of Malta

Ghost Minister

The week before` I was called as a witness in a criminal libel case which Min John Dalli instituted against Super One Head of` News and Current Affairs Mr Gino Cauchi.

An unidentified caller had phoned live on Manwel Cuschieri`s Tajjeb li Tkun Taf` ( on that particular day the programme was presented by Alfred Grixti) and asked whether in the context of the Prime Minister`s declaration that ten million here or there do not really matter, and the Minister`s of Finance statement that hadd ma jaghmel xejn ta` xejn (nobody does anything for nothing) , whether he had a right to suspect that the Maltese taxpayer has been short-changed by ten million.

During the evidence I related how in the world of international banking the` sale of Mid-Med Bank to HSBC through direct negotiations between the Minister and the buyer is considered scandalous.` I related how at least four international banks phoned me to check whether what they had heard was in fact true and expressed the view that privatisations like this only happen in African countries or in banana republics.

This evidence was given under oath but I refused to disclose the names of the international banks involved. They had talked to me in confidence and I was obliged to keep it that way although I expressed my total personal agreement to their sentiments.

Writing in the Sunday Times last week` the Minister of Finance said that in so doing I was concocting ghosts.` Apart from the fact that I said what I said under oath I challenge the Minister to name any country where its` Minister` of Finance sold a bank controlling half the banking market through direct negotiations without bidding. Rather than ghosts these are real pitiful stories witnessed by the whole Maltese population.

And the Minister continued to ask whether these ghosts had anything to do with my bright idea to entice private shareholders to sell their shares back to the bank at Lm2 per share. No, Minister. That buy-back scheme was not the work of ghosts.` It was the work of serious management who put their money where there mouth is and launched a` share buy-back scheme when it perceived that the value of the quoted equity had fallen far below its` real value. And if your criticism is for offering` to buy at a low price than I would remind you that it was still above the market price and that business sense is when one buys low and sells high. The problem with your sale to HSBC is that you sold low and cannot take consolation by my attempting to buy low.

And as to the ghosts who bought the Maltacom shares at the IPO I told the Minister` thousand times already that the names of all these first class international institutions are in the IPO documents within his` Ministry or at Maltacom and that if he` cannot find them he can ask HSBC for full details as they were the drivers in the allocation in view of the excess demand.

What a pity that whilst the Minister is quick to invent stories to build up` ghost defense he fails to reply to the simple question I have been long asking. Why did he include a risk premium of 6% when discounting the future earnings value of the Bank when he knew that Mid-Med Bank was practically risk free` In so doing he exposed the nation` to accept half the real value of the bank and gives full reason to callers like the one who originated the subject of the libel case to suspect` scenarios of wrong-doing which can only be dispelled by a full independent investigation and not by a parliamentary committee where the government controls the majority.

It is the` Ministry of Finance that is being run by` ghosts.` Whilst the NSO shows the deficit is widening over 2000 and backs this with detailed figures up to November 2001, the ghosts at the Ministry of Finance say that the deficit is reducing. Whilst with 6 weeks to go to the end of the year the ghosts at the Ministry of Finance were sure they can cash in Lm47 million privatisation revenues by the end of the year, reality shows that this has not materialised. Yet for the ghosts at the Ministry of Finance it seems that a Lm47 million miss is just a non-event. They are experienced to misses of this sort the way these ghosts had sold Mid-Med Bank.

Talk is cheap indeed. So cheap that the Minister who wrecked our economy and engineered the horrendous deficit which is leading us to the Argentina route pretends that he is not part of the problem and imagines that he has the solution. And he ominously titles the article very aptly Do cry for me , Argentina. If the Argentines with their dramatic economic and social problems are being instigated by our Minister to find the time to cry for us, then we really have a problem

Alfred Mifsud