From Avv. M. Martone

By coincidence, last Sunday, on the very day I started a publicity campaign in your newspaper to let the Maltese and your readers know about the existence of my website www.marteitaliano.com.mt your newspaper carried on its front page “Huge bribe demanded for Malta Freeport Terminal in Brindisi”. The website has many details about the shady and incredible events in the Bical saga and the misfortunes that befell the Malta & Europe Hotels Ltd, former owner of the former Grand Hotel Excelsior in Floriana (which they say will reopen in June).

One knows that corruption has always existed all over the world, and will always exist.

But there is a difference.

The difference is that in Italy, the corruption scandal in Brindisi is being investigated by the judicial authorities seeking to ascertain who is responsible and the scandal itself will not go unpunished, just as the people behind the Mani Pulite scandals were all punished.

But in Malta, neither the police nor any magistrate were charged with ascertaining and punishing the grave responsibilities relating to the dirty scandal of Bical, which has existed for 35 years.

More precisely, the police and a magistrate first, and later another magistrate, were charged to carry out investigations into the Bical scandal against unfaithful government officials, complicit accountants and consultants.

As was stated in MaltaToday in many stories carried since October 2003, this initiative was undertaken by the Labour administration in office from 1996 to 1998. Successively, however, such investigations were suspended, grounded and sunk by the successive Nationalist administrations.

Do you not think, dear editor, that the time has now come to expose this matter to the Maltese public just as I am doing for European public opinion? It would be right, now that Malta is part of Europe.

Michele Martone