Compliance and due diligence checks on White Flag International will only be carried out if at any point in time it is decided that the ministry will enter into a contractual agreement with the organisation, Minister for Environment Jose Herrera said yesterday when questioned on the relationship between his Ministry and White Flag International.

White Flag International launched the Rise the Flag for the Ocean campaign in Malta back in October with the aim of increasing awareness of having clean oceans for humans and marine life.

The Shift News recently raised questions regarding the eNGO’s authenticity, highlighting a contrast with the Blue Flag initiative.

Answering questions from this newsroom yesterday, Herrera insisted that White Flag International had approached his Ministry as the Ministry responsible for the environment.

“They explained to me what the concept of the white flag was, and they invited me on a number of initiatives they had taken.”

The Minister did indeed take them up on their offer, and participated in one of the diving /clean-up activities in October of this year.

Herrera explained how he subscribes to any initiatives which clean up beaches, insisting that what they did was choose a number of beaches, bring their owner people, and clean up that particular beach from plastics.

“[White Flag International’s] Kristijan Curavic told me that their concept is to declare a number of beaches across the world as white flag, meaning there is no plastic.”

Photographs taken at a number of beaches with White Flags showed that they weren’t actually free of plastic.

“The flag is based on the fact that the beach itself will be free from plastics, so once it’s free from plastics, then it is declared a white flag.”

With regards to the €25,000 per flag raised, the minister said that he did not enter into any contractual obligations, and did not pay anything for them. He did note that he is aware that White Flag International might have entered into some agreements with the private sector.

Queried on whether he would continue to support them after these allegations of illegitimacy, the Minister insisted that “at this point these are mere allegations.

“I will do compliance if I am going to enter into a contractual obligation with someone, then I will definitely make due diligence.

“I'm following what's being said but I'm neither here nor there on the issue, and I don't think I should make a compliance since I have no obligations or contract with them.”

A statement from the Ministry said that any allegations should be addressed directly to the White Flag International entity itself.

 

PN demands an explanation from Herrera

In a statement, the Nationalist Party demanded that Minister Herrera explain his interest in the working of White Flag.

The Opposition laid a number of questions towards the Minister – when, how, and through whom did the first contact between him and Croatian Kristijan Curavic take place; what type of due diligence and background checks were done and who did them; how much taxes were spent on this scheme; how the Minister sees nothing wrong with paying €25,000 for every White Flag without any cleanups taking place; and if it is true that he sent a representative to iGaming companies to convince them to sponsor some of the White Flags?

The party added that if these preliminary questions are not answered genuinely, the scheme will continue to be viewed in a negative light.