‘Police can investigate anything based on any piece of information’ - Bonnici
Justice Minister Owen Bonnici backed a statement made by Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri to MEPs compiling a report on the rule of law in Malta, where he said that the police did not need ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate a crime.
Asked about this by The Malta Independent, Bonnici said that “the police can investigate anything on any piece of information. Requirements arise when deciding whether to arraign somebody in court or not - that needs a certain grade of proof.”
Back in June 2016, this newsroom had revealed that the police were not investigating thenEnergy Minister Konrad Mizzi and the PM’s chief of staff Keith Schembri individually over the Panama Papers revelations.
The reason provided in writing to this newsroom was that there was not the necessary reasonable suspicion of the alleged crime to launch an individual investigation into the men named in the scandal.
A massive leak of data from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca to German newspaper Sudddeutsche Zeitung led to the discovery that Mizzi and Schembri each held a Panama-registered company sheltered by a New Zealand trust. The revelations were first exposed by slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Mizzi and Schembri have categorically denied any wrongdoing, with the former insisting that his offshore company in the notoriously secretive jurisdiction of Panama never held any bank accounts or funds and has never traded.
Leaked documents from the Panama Papers, however, show that the financial intermediary, Nexia BT, which set up the offshore structures for Mizzi and Schembri, who are PEPs, were in fact in the process of trying to set up bank accounts.
In a rule of law report penned by MEPs from across the political divide, published just last week, the chief justice had stressed that reasonable suspicion is not required for the police to initiate investigations.
This jars with a section of the report where it described how Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar “never started investigations into serious suspicions of money laundering relating to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, despite clear reports by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit submitted to them [the police] in April, July and November 2016.”
“The police commissioner confirmed to members that several FIAU reports were sent to the police and registered (under the same file number) but no investigation was launched. Given the fact that the police commissioner is directly appointed by the Prime Minister, questions were raised as to why investigations relating to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff were not investigated. Members were reminded that only police forces can start an investigation in Malta,” reads the report.
According to the EP mission report, the chief justice also told the MEPs that the attorney general could request a police investigation.
But Attorney General Peter Grech told the mission that to issue such an order, there had to be concrete evidence in order to stand before the courts.
When asked by members if several media reports about serious suspicions of money laundering by politically exposed persons, including one minister and the PM’s chief of staff, were not enough to request such an investigation order, he answered “No.”
The report was penned after a European Parliament delegation visited Malta on 30 November and 1 December. In addition to Malta being the subject of much negative press thanks to Mizzi and Schembri’s involvement in the Panama Papers, the brutal murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia prompted questions on a culture of impunity taking over the nation.
The report tackled Malta’s controversial cash-forpassport scheme, the suspicion of corruption of high-ranking officials, the role and effectiveness of the police force and other contentious topics.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, in reaction to the report, had mused that the conclusions of the report had already been made before the delegation came to Malta and spoke to the relevant people.