'Just ignore them. Their hobby is making storms in teacups.'

Daphne Caruana Galizia Sunday, 28 June 2015, 14:15 Last update: about 10 years ago

The title I’ve chosen is an actual comment which somebody posted beneath one of the news reports about the Nationalist Party’s press conference yesterday. That press conference was about what is possibly the most shocking scandal we have had so far, rivalled only by the government’s standing as guarantor to the tune of €88 million for the bank loan of a crony-company building the power station, to save its political neck.

And I would say that in democratic terms and in terms of what it says about the corruption of the rule of law, the Daniel-Roderick-Ray Zammit shocker is worse still than the government’s decision to guarantee a private company’s bank loan up to even such a huge amount. And I have chosen that comment as a title because it encapsulates the terrifying failure of so many people to understand the gravity of the situation, what it means, and what it says about the corruption of institutions, the weakness of the separation of powers, and the cavalier indifference or outright collusion of politicians like Manuel Mallia.

Mallia must have known what Deputy Commissioner Ray Zammit and his two police inspector sons, Daniel and Roderick, were up to and yet when he was Police Minister he did not do anything about it. This is because his conflict of interests was massive. There is always going to be a problem when a criminal defence lawyer is made minister responsible for the police, which is why such appointments are irresponsible. But in Mallia’s case it was always going to be worse still because of the nature of the man, his client list, and his casual attitude towards socialising with all the wrong sort of people.

What was Manuel Mallia’s conflict of interest in this particular case and how would he have known what was going on with Joe Gaffarena, the man he appointed acting Commissioner of Police (who is also his cousin), and his two inspector sons? It’s perfectly plain. Long before he joined the Labour Party – in December 2008, to be precise – Mallia was engaged by Joe Gaffarena as defence counsel, along with Gianella Demarco, for his daughter’s husband, Stephen Caruana, who (I have to say allegedly) shot and killed his wife’s lover at night on the bedroom balcony.

Lawyers, like priests and accountants, cannot breach confidence without severe professional censure. So clients tell them everything and are actively encouraged to do so because defence lawyers have to be prepared and cannot afford to be wrong-footed in court. There is no way on earth that Joe Gaffarena will not have told Manuel Mallia that he ‘bought’ his son-in-law’s investigating officer and prosecutor by setting up two companies with him, his brother, his father and even his mother. The fact that Ray Zammit and Manuel Mallia are cousins makes it even more unlikely that Joe Gaffarena did not tell Mallia of the arrangement. Ray Zammit might even have told Mallia himself. Before he was appointed acting Commissioner of Police in July last year, Ray Zammit, along with his two sons, transferred his shares in one company to his wife, and that could well have been on Manuel Mallia’s advice. The other company was set up after he was made acting Commissioner of Police, and the shares were from the start held in his wife’s name.

What we have here is an acting Commissioner of Police fully aware that one of his police inspectors had set up in business with the father-in-law and brother-in-law of a man he was investigating, and yet who did nothing about it not only because the corrupt inspector is his son (though that would be made enough) but mainly because he too, and his wife and other son, are involved in the same business. That is on a scale of corruption that should boggle the mind, but then you get comments from the idiocracy treating this as though it is ‘just another fuss about nothing’. Clearly, they do not understand just how frightening this is, what it means.

The government seems to have understood, though, because it told the press that it is consulting with the Attorney-General to see what had best be done about the murder case which the corrupt inspector was supposed to be investigating. The government said nothing, though, about what it plans to do with the corrupt inspector’s corrupt father, who knew what was going on and let it all happen because he was just as deeply involved – and this when he was assistant commissioner, then deputy commissioner, and worst of all, acting Commissioner of Police. Ray Zammit left the force, or was made to leave, a few weeks ago and is now head of a largely imaginary organisation which is supposed to ensure that local wardens do not commit abuse. Is that the biggest irony, or what? I’d say it’s the biggest insult to the electorate. Ray Zammit should be kicked out on his ear, stripped of his police pension, and dragged through the courts. Over the last two years we have seen a hapless Enemalta employee made a spectacle of by the police and in court because he accepted some pieces of crystal from oil trader George Farrugia, when he gave him nothing in return, and former Enemalta chairman Alex Tranter prosecuted over the equivalent of petty cash used while travelling on Enemalta business, which he was entitled to use.

Now here we have a (former) acting Commissioner of Police and a (former) prosecutor found to have been in business with the father-in-law of a murder suspect who in six and a half years has not been placed under a bill of indictment, and everybody freezes either because it is too shocking for them to understand or because in their befuddled minds three pieces of crystal or a homemade clock constitute a bribe to an Enemalta employee or a finance minister, but going into business on a 50-50 basis with your son-in-law’s investigator and prosecutor, his father who is an even more senior policeman, his brother who is another police inspector, and their wife and mother does not constitute bribery and corruption.

It is bribery and corruption of the worst order. Corrupting an Enemalta official is one thing. Corrupting senior police officers to pervert the course of justice is another thing altogether. It bites right at the heart of our institutions, of democracy, of what is supposed to keep us safe. Two judges spent two years in prison for accepting a cash bribe from a drug trafficker to reduce his sentence on appeal. This case is no different. Well, it is – it is much worse. A cash bribe is a cash bribe, but when you go into business with the person who is corrupting you, you are embroiled on a permanent basis. And is murder we are talking about.