Bigger than the election

It looks like a concerted attack, and it probably is. With the EU and the eurozone being only now out of the crisis, with so many millions still unemployed, with entire countries like Italy and now France under President Macron clamouring for reform and with continuing pressure being put to standardise taxation across the eurozone and to combat tax evasion (and Malta is being portrayed as a tax evasion country), Malta will face huge pressure to conform.

If this happens, it will mean our financial services can lose their competitive edge. On Thursday, at FinanceMalta’s 10th conference, the speakers were still exuding optimism on a bright future for financial services, even though there were some oblique references to what a participant called ‘the elephant in the room’. But this person was referring to PanamaGate and its local reverberations, little knowing what was going to be revealed yesterday.

This attack is bigger than the election, even bigger than PanamaGate, Egrant and all that. It is an attack on the whole financial services sector, making all employees in the sector tainted by association.

We do not know so far the motivation behind this attack. Certainly, the timing – on the eve of the election – is suspicious. Throughout the whole of yesterday we could see the parties struggling to harness this new development to their electoral strategies. The PN claimed that there is a link between the Malta Files and PanamaGate. The PL blamed the PN MEPs who attacked Malta’s financial services sector in speeches in the European Parliament. The Prime Minister yesterday afternoon called for a joint action but at no point did I hear an invita-

This attack is bigger than the election, even bigger than PanamaGate, Egrant and all that. It is an attack on the whole financial services sector, making all employees in the sector tainted by association

tion to his counterpart either for a suspension of the electioneering or at least for an early meeting.

What is certain is that this attack is on the financial services sector as a whole, and not on just Konrad Mizzi or Keith Schembri. I believe Joseph Muscat was incredibly lax in not taking any steps with regard to the Panama two and this and its repercussions might have impacted on the Malta Files, but equally – as already happened in the passports for sale issue – I would not put it past many practitioners in financial services, (many with PN affiliations) to be at the forefront of what is now being attacked.

Let us see the details coming out and speak afterwards. Maybe everything that was being done was in accordance with the laws and regulations that Malta has had over the past years in agreement with the IMF and the European Commission. In which case, Malta must continue to argue that it is no tax evasion haven and what was done is legitimate has been done has been legitimate.

Even so, however, I fear the cumulative impact will make us roll back our precious competitive edge.