What they said about Pilatus Bank chairman's arrest

Updated 5.40pm Malta woke up on Wednesday to read of news that Pilatus Bank chairman Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad had been arrested in the United States, and within minutes the reactions began pouring in. The country's financial regulator spent much of the day deliberating before announcing that it was ordering Mr Sadr to step aside as bank director and would be suspending his voting rights as bank shareholder.  But well before that decision was communicated, many of Malta's movers and shakers had made their views about Mr Sadr's arrest known.  Paul Caruana Galizia, Daphne Caruana Galizia's son, summed up the development in a two-word tweet - 'One Down.' He and his brothers subsequently issued a lengthier statement in which they said the arrest "ended the impunity with which Hashemi Nejad operated....but comes at a terrible cost."  PD member of Parliament Godfrey Farrugia added his voice to the chorus, noting that although from publicly available information, Pilatus Bank did not yet appear to be directly implicated, the transactions were made via Switzerland where the bank's holding company is domiciled. "It does not need much to conclude that if the chairman of a bank is alleged...