The complete smokescreen that national broadcaster PBS put up over what has perhaps been one of the most damning indictments this government has seen, and that in itself is saying something, is symptomatic of a far deeper rot that has taken hold of this country.
In a nutshell, the European Banking Authority has come down hard on Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit for what appears to have been an abject dereliction of duty when it came to its supervision of Pilatus Bank, that bank which has gained so much infamy in Malta for so many reasons and on so many levels.
According to the results of an EBA investigation, the FIAU allowed Pilatus Bank to get away with murder in banking terms, it gave the bank clean bills of health when it was diseased to the core and it allowed the bank to carry on with some very suspicious activities by turning a convenient blind eye.
The EBA’s findings were released on Wednesday afternoon and the news went viral on almost every online news site in the country. But the national broadcaster - which is meant to be the standard bearer when it comes to objectivity, fairness and neutrality – chose to completely ignore the EBA’s damning findings and decided to only report the FIAU’s terse statement to the effect that the unit was ‘disappointed’.
That PBS is little more than a tool in the hands of the government of the day has been a reality for a long, long time but this government has pushed that envelope to all new abysmal levels.
But again, the PBS incident is just one symptom of the rotten situation that surrounds every aspect of the bank - whose owner is facing 125 in US prison over money laundering and sanctions busting - and its questionable relations with members of the government of Malta, where it seems to have been given a virtual carte blanche to operate as long as it helped facilitate certain transactions which we will not mention at this point.
At this stage, it is more than evident that a political price will have to be paid for this debacle. And while we are certain that the real culprits here are far too spineless own up and assume any sort of accountability, the questions is: who, exactly, will fall on their sword for them?
Will it be Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, under whose remit the FIAU falls and who had once quipped that those other damning and incriminating FIAU reports that were buried until they eventually made their way to the media were ‘written to be leaked’?
Will it be Parliamentary Secretary Silvio Schembri, who had insisted last month in Parliament that the EBA investigations into both the FIAU and the MFSA was only ‘routine’ and part of their remit. Yes, it was part of their remit, but it was anything but routine.
It is now more than ever evident that some kind of price needs to be paid for this situation, by those who brought the bank to the country, those who used it and those who allowed it to continue operating unfettered in clear contravention of some of the most basic banking principles.
And the horrifying thought is that the powers that be, out of complicity or incompetence, have allowed this situation to fester at a bank that deals in actual hard, fiat currency. But in the meantime we are as a country, and under the same government, appear to be opening the bitcoin floodgates to people rejected by some very reputable jurisdictions. The stage is set here for a Pilatus situation gone wild, and the government is playing a very dangerous game with the future of this country.
The EBA-Pilatus situation, in turn, is symptomatic of the rot that has spread through the country, where the rule of law has been turned into a running joke. This situation, in which the authorities failed in their duty to protect the country and its financial services systems from abuse and exploitation, shows just how much the rule of law has been broken down.
The rule of law is not about not having people running around in the streets armed to the teeth, it is about these institutions that are meant to uphold good governance being allowed and empowered to do their jobs without fear or favour from anyone. The government has already captured those institutions that should have, but never did, investigate the revelations placed on their tables that exposed the misdeeds of those closest to the Prime Minister.
This latest troubling news of the EBA investigation into the FIAU, which incidentally confirms much of what much of the media has been objecting to so vociferously for so long, is just one more link in the chain that is the totality of state capture this government had the audacity to attempt, and which it is succeeding to accomplish.