There is something fundamentally incongruous about the government’s offer of an amnesty for those individuals who paid to have their smart meters tampered with to slow down the recording of their electricity consumption in terms of its own pledges of transparency and to fight corruption in all its insidious forms.

This government has laudably removed the statute of limitations for politicians involved in corruption, it has introduced whistleblower protection legislation and it has spoken vociferously time after time about stamping out corruption.

That is why the government’s glaring reluctance to prosecute the 1,000 owners of tampered smart meters, which they knowingly had tampered with and in fact paid for that tampering, is more than a little perplexing. It is, in effect, letting the perpetrators go free with impunity.

But, then again, there is something of a tradition in Malta for the authorities to turn a blind eye to mass illegalities. Just consider for a moment the blind eye turned toward the hundreds if not thousands of illegalities that take place each and every hunting season, or the hundreds, if not thousands, of traffic violations drivers commit every day in the form of failures to indicate when turning, running red lights, failing to switch on headlights in tunnels and the like.

Now whether the thinking behind this is that if there is a critical mass of people doing it, it can’t be that all that bad, or whether that blind eye is turned toward such issues out of electoral considerations is debatable.

The answer is that it is probably a little of both. But the fact of the matter is that 1,000 smart metres equals 1,000 owners plus their immediate and extended families, and that equals a lot of voters that could be alienated from the government through the self-serving voting tendencies of much of the electorate.

And according to the figures released by the government, the smart meter electricity theft racket was corruption on a massive scale. Some 1,000 smart meters were tampered with to slow down the registration of electricity consumption and the damage in terms of stolen electricity amounted to €30 million in one year alone.

That, as is being highlighted by the Opposition, works out at an average of €30,000 per adulterated smart meter. But say an average household’s electricity bill works out, as a very generous estimate, at €400 a month – that is still less than €5,000 a year and is well below the €30,000 average.

The only answer to this discrepancy is that there were, quite inevitably, a large number of electricity-intensive commercial consumers that were also involved in the wide-ranging racket. And while no one is out for a mere naming and shaming exercise, the public has the right to know which commercial enterprises they purchase goods and/or services from have effectively been indirectly robbing them by stealing electricity from the state.

With all the uproar that ensued from the oil procurement scandal, it must be pointed out that the sheer extent, in monetary terms, of this scandal far outweighs the kickbacks paid to Enemalta employees.

Moreover, considering all the angst generated by the issue of electricity bills over recent years, it is downright insulting that the government would consider letting those who paid for their smart meters to be tampered with, to the direct detriment of the honest taxpaying public, to be let off the hook after only being made to pay the difference plus a penalty and after spilling the beans on who, from the tampering side, was involved in the racket.

The government’s public reasoning that this leniency is aimed at casting a wider net to catch the ‘bigger fish’ makes some sort of sense. But the far more sensible solution would be for all those involved to be charged and be offered reduced penalties by the state by plea bargaining and telling all that they know of the circumstances leading up to their involvement in the racket. In short, justice should be allowed take its course without political interference.

The government has said that it knows who the people are who had their smart meters tampered with, and it has asked them to come forward, admit their wrongdoing and give the government the information it needs to catch what it called the “big fish” of the operation. But the fact of the matter is that the consumers who paid into the racket and stole electricity are not “small fish” as they have been described– they are just as guilty in the scam as those who fiddled with the meters in the first place. They knew what they were doing was illegal and as such they should have been ready to pay the price for their actions should those actions come to light as they have. All those involved in the practice are all fish, and all the fish involved should be made to fry if the government is truly serious about tackling corruption, as opposed to merely looking after its own political interests.

Whether the government or Enemalta has the legal right to grant a waiver for the consumers who very evidently formed part of this racket is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the government must, morally-speaking, throw the book at everyone involved in the scam. In so doing it will be sending out the right message that corruption will not be tolerated. Anything short of that will simply breed yet more corruption wherever its ugly head can be raised.

The government must condemn all those found to have been involved in the scam – those who received payment and rigged the meters to allow consumers to steal tens of millions of euros worth of electricity, as well as those who paid to steal the electricity. Anything short of that will be interpreted as simply condoning the practice.