The police have ignored 28 suspicious cases flagged by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit last year, a situation that angered members of the PANA committee who were in Malta last week, Alternattiva Demokratika chairman Arnold Cassola said.

Interviewed by The Malta Independent online editor Stephen Calleja for INDEPTH, Prof. Cassola said the lack of police interest in these cases was something of great concern to the PANA committee members, set up by the European Parliament to investigate money laundering, tax avoidance and tax evasion.

But this was not the only matter that irritated the PANA committee during their short stay in Malta. Prof. Cassola said that the schedule that they were given continued to change from one minute to the other. For example, he said, the venue for the committee’s meeting with No Portfolio Minister Konrad Mizzi was changed three times. Even the order of their meetings kept changing till the last minute.

They were also irked by the “disgraceful” (pastazata) way that OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri treated the committee, with a letter being passed on to the chairman by a messenger in the middle of the street.

 

Schembri’s accusation that the PANA committee has no mandate was also not well received by the members. “It’s like saying that the Public Accounts Committee set up by Parliament (in Malta) has no say,” Prof. Cassola said.