Given the revelations of these last few days, following the Italian authorities’ crackdown on the ‘Ndrangheta’s money-laundering operations through land-based and internet gaming, it has become more than obvious that Malta is the place of choice for this sort of illicit activity.

This is a separate jurisdiction but still a European Union member state. It’s just a hop, skip and a jump away which makes it perfect for quick visits. You can be there and back in a day. And Malta’s legislative infrastructure is all geared up for internet gaming.

But now we can see that it is not geared up enough. When Italian crime syndicates begin moving in, it is clearly time to tighten up the processes of scrutiny, legislative loopholes and security services monitoring. The ‘Ndrangheta are not a bunch of crooks killing each other in Calabria, as the popular impression seems to be (among those who have heard of the crime syndicate at all). They control a significant chunk of the world’s cocaine traffic, and almost the whole of Europe’s. They are not to be trifled with, and we don’t want or need to be their conveniently-located washing-machine.

I wrote last week that we haven’t had a silly season for some years now, and this summer looks to be no different. This week alone has provided enough news to keep journalists at their desks after hours and readers hooked onto the internet. Apart from the internet-gaming/money-laundering arrests, we have had all the thrills of the Minister for the Economy and his attempts at locking the Stable door after the horse has bolted with a hastily cobbled together lease agreement.

Then there was the bombshell that Gasol, the lead partner in the government’s much-vaunted power station project, is pulling out (it is technically bankrupt, though none of that was said in anyone’s press releases). And overshadowed by all this, we had the news that Tecom Investments is selling “in the short term” its 60% stake in Go, Malta’s main telecoms provider, which it owns through a subsidiary. Sitting on the beach and in bars and restaurants with their phones linked up to the internet, people just can’t keep up.

Kirsty Debono of the Nationalist Party said at a press conference a few days ago that the Bank of Valletta has been turned into a Labour Party club, and she is right. Labour is programmed to believe that it has moral ownership of the bank and special privileges over it.

It actually believes that the Labour government of the 1970s created the bank, rather than merely stealing it from its private owners, and therefore it spiritually belongs to Labour. Until you understand that mindset and its historical origins, you can never understand why Labour behaves the way it does when it is in government and begins treating the Bank of Valletta like its own personal piggy-bank and a service-station for cronies.

The difficulty is that while the government has effective control of the bank through the chairman and directors it appoints – who then recruit, reassemble and realign senior staff as convenient – the bank remains a public company listed on the Malta Stock Exchange and accountable to its very many shareholders who are not the government. The current state of affairs is disgraceful.

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Unbelievably, Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi vanished in the immediate aftermath of the announcement that Gasol is pulling out. He made his voice heard only after the Opposition laid into the mess, and then not in person but through a stiff, minimal statement released to the press.

And what do you know? His communications officer had forgotten to remove the old recording and put in a new one, because the statement said: THE POWER STATION IS ON TRACK. How many times have we heard that in the last two years and counting? “On track” is not the same as “being built”. If it really had been on track, it would have been commissioned and operating by now.

Konrad Mizzi really has no sense of irony. And his communications officer isn’t helping in that department at all. Communications officers are supposed to advise their bosses on how best to communicate matters to the press and the public without looking stupid or setting themselves up for yet another pratfall.

The remaining shareholders in Electrogas Malta “have strong financial backing”, Mizzi said in his statement, so nobody need worry. Is the man serious? We know they have strong financial backing because it’s been one of the hot topics of discussion of the last couple of weeks. They’ve got €101 million from the Bank of Valletta and don’t need to worry about how to pay it back because if they don’t, the government is obliged to do so, using public money and public property. In other words, the strong financial backing they have got is from the government of Malta.

Thanks a lot, Konrad.

 

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