Grey continuity
Malta’s greylisting by the FATF sent shockwaves through society at all levels in Malta.
From the estate agent to the grocery store, from the gaming company employee to the accounting student still at University, most of the Maltese know instinctively that the formal downgrading of our trustworthiness by an international body tasked with fighting money-laundering can only make their daily battles harder and the path towards their long term objectives steeper.
Although we may sometimes think that our world vision in Malta is framed in the messages of the political parties, it is not always red or blue for those toiling their way on the ground.
For most of them, a fact is a fact. I believe that most of those potentially affected by the greylisting took the Government’s highly advertised efforts of 18-months of hard work with a pinch of salt, in the knowledge that these overlap with eight years of excesses condoning abuse of power and blatant corruption. People with a direct interest in Malta’s reputation also feel great scepticism at the Prime Minister’s reaction that the greylisting was basically an accident as Malta passed the technical criteria in the Moneyval assessment and that hence such greylisting is not a serious matter.
Prime Minister Abela’s emphasis on the fact that Malta passed the technical assessments points to either his naiveté or his incompetence on a matter of fundamental national importance. The FATF assessment gauges trust. As we all know from our daily relationships between humans, trust is something that goes beyond the technical.
It is painful to read again now, but on 4 November last year I wrote in this same column expressing concerns about the contrasting message that Malta was sending to the international community by, on the one hand, implementing Moneyval recommendations while, on the other hand, playing complacent to the outrageous news that the MFSA Chairman was in cahoots with Yorgen Fenech having travelled with him as his personal investment advisor to Las Vegas.
That’s the same Yorgen Fenech who is also the alleged mastermind behind the assassination of foremost journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the man behind the electrogas scandal.
Government’s lax attitude to cases like that and a score of the same have a direct bearing on the nation’s trustworthiness. There is very little margin of manoeuvre here. Any efforts by Minister Caruana on the technical side and Minister Bartolo on the diplomatic side were certainly diluted from day one with the bad blood surrounding the name of the Maltese Government as a whole within the international community.
Now that thousands of livelihoods are on the line, now that the future prosperity of our students at MCAST and University are at stake, I hope that Government realises that there is more than ticking the box that needs to be done to get us away from the grey list and back to where we belong.
First and foremost, I would expect a dose of humble demeanour by someone just found guilty of untrustworthiness. Abela’s disdain to the Opposition’s pro-active stance shows that he is far from doing that act of contrition, which, as we know, is the first step for any sinner to start seeking redemption. Instead of shooting down Bernard Grech’s appeal for a National Task Force, Abela should have embraced it and supplied it with needed resources, including all the documentation detailing the greylisting rationale by FATF which till now remains a closely guarded secret.
In the real world where we work hard for our salary or profits, we all know well that if it’s not working, you need to change it or fix it. Abela’s reference to the existing technical committee which produced the grey list as an alternative to Bernard Grech’s National Task Force points to the other direction. The Prime Minister intends to fix his failure using the same tools which led us there.
Abela’ signals are clear. Continuity is his golden word. I suppose he intends to keep insisting that the passports for cash scheme, so harshly criticised by the European Commission, presents all the guarantees to safeguard the Union’s Schengen system while keeping the names of the new EU citizens secret to all other Europeans.
I suppose that he will keep on protecting the misdemeanour, serious allegations and outright abuse of power that we saw in the past year under his leadership, like Rosianne Cutajar’s 39k undeclared cash, Carmelo Abela’s alleged role in a spectacular heist and other ministers dishing out contracts and direct orders to the privileged few.
We all know Abela’s recipe. He declared it from the very beginning. It is the recipe that made it possible for him to seize the prize from Chris Fearne’s hands who wanted a clean cut with Joseph Muscat’s regime of corruption and abuse of power. Instead, Abela promised continuity. And he delivered it. Konrad Mizzi still goes around as the ‘honourable’ MP. Keith Schembri only slightly dishonoured and seen as a hero by labour supporters, while Joseph Muscat is rewarded with a 60k departure prize. With Abela’s brand of continuity, we are embracing a continuing list of greys.