Containing the fallout

A week and a half from the brutal killing of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, with no conclusions reached by the investigators and with all sorts of fallout both in Malta and outside Malta, it is time for the entire Maltese nation and especially the business sector to try and control the fallout.

Unfortunately, it does not seem we can entirely depend on the political class to do this as they seem intent on continuing their feud with any means available, including the tragedy.

Many may have seen glimpses of how the killing has been reported all over the world, but few will have seen and pondered upon all that has been written.

Many newspapers have been speculating, without any shred of evidence that they are on the right track. Considering that they seem to somehow exclude this murder was done for internal Maltese reasons, they all seem to gravitate towards a foreign source.

There they diverge: some point to a connection with Azerbaijan, but many are now pointing towards a triangle formed by Sicilian, Maltese and Libyan interests. Others point in other directions – the drug trade, for instance.

Whatever. In the meantime, all over the world’s media journalists have gone to town to depict Malta as a Mafia country, as a place where laws are bent, where shady businessmen congregate with even shadier operators to help businesses defraud their own governments from tax revenues. Huge sums have been mentioned. The scheme whereby businesses can get back some 85% of their taxes in refunds has been pointed out in great detail.

All this will have consequences especially when changes are proposed at EU or Ecofin levels, especially with the introdu8ction of Qualified Majority voting in the Council. We could find ourselves losing this competitive advantage.

This has in turn been amplified by comments made locally. Now of course there are more than justified complaints about the police, the courts and the investigative structures, and one can live with them. But to conclude that Malta is a Mafia country flies in the face of sheer evidence. As the prime minister said yesterday at the EY conference, "the rule of law is as strong in Malta as any other EU member state”.

One does not have to make some clear references to this or that member state because this is not a race, and certainly not a race to the bottom.

There are in Malta many valid businessmen who are not crooks, and who uphold the rule of law. There are in Malta many foreign businesses that have come here because attracted by the congenial environment of Malta and certainly not because they can fiddle with the taxes.

Certainly Malta can get better as regards law enforcement in general and it is true that particular persons at a high level need to pull up their socks or else be replaced but we do not need a revolution on the streets to do that.