There is no way that former Labour Party treasurer and electoral candidate Joe Sammut could have done what he has been doing without a network of support from individuals, unpaid but more likely paid, within the Malta Financial Services Authority, Identity Malta and the police. Put simply, Sammut has been running a racket in visas for Libyan citizens obtained through fraud and corruption. The point is being overlooked that the 850 companies he incorporated fraudulently over the last few months are not an end in themselves or even the means to do business, but have been set up for the sole purpose of obtaining Maltese residency visas for Libyan men and their families.
Maltese law allows those who set up a company in Malta with a minimum share capital of €100,000 to apply for a resident's visa. It does not, of course, mean that the visa is automatically granted. The company and its operations have to be scrutinised, but this has obviously not been happening. Some of the companies had share capital held as short-life perishable stocks, like chocolates in high summer, or packaged orange juice. Others claimed they would be exporting clothes and other consumer goods from Malta to Libya - and this when Libya is in a state of anarchy and civil war, with no real government, the collapse of the rule of law, and companies and businesses pulling out or shutting down because they can no longer operate in the current conditions.
The Opposition has described this as "institutionalised corruption" and has criticised the government for keeping silent in the face of what is a monumental scandal. It is right, of course. The government appears to be treating this matter as though it is the straightforward prosecution of one corrupt accountant, in which justice must be allowed to take its course. But it is not as simple as that. The fact that it was possible for Joe Sammut to do what he did exposes the serious weaknesses in the Malta Financial Services Authority and in Identity Malta, which was set up by the incoming Labour government to handle all passport, identity card and visa matters and which is headed by failed Labour Party electoral candidate Joe Vella Bonnici, who has put half his immediate family on the payroll there. Investigating the weaknesses and/or corruption at those two state organisations, which allowed this to happen, is not just a matter for the police. It is, more pertinently, a matter for the government, whose duty and obligation it is to ensure that it cannot continue to happen and that those who allowed it to happen are dealt with by their employers regardless of whether or not they are dealt with by the police and the courts.
The near-constant revelations of corruption over the last two years have made it obvious that these are not isolated incidents perpetrated by rogue individuals. They point to a state of mind and attitude that have been borne of the corruption, cronyism and nepotism endemic in the government's systematic removal of worthy people from their posts and their replacement with useless and shifty individuals who recognise no boundaries and whose governing principle seems to be 'Why not?'
A couple of weeks ago I reported on my website that the executive chairman of Identity Malta, whose job it is to ensure that corruption does not occur in the granting of visas - including visas to Libyans - had been spotted in a salubrious street in St Julian's, accompanied by his son, a new employee of the Malta Tourism Authority, showing houses to a Pakistani couple. So is he acting as a real estate broker and taking commission on the sale of property to those who buy Maltese passports? It certainly looks like it. But when I rang Joe Vella Bonnici several times and then emailed him twice with my questions about this matter, he did not pick up the phone, return my calls nor acknowledge or reply to my emails. In this scenario, I have no choice but to conclude that yes, he is brokering property to those who apply to the state organisation he heads to buy a Maltese passport. Another scandal is clearly brewing there, but the government seems unbothered. By the time the next three years are up, it will be drowning in corruption that is entirely of its own making through the appointment and promotion of indecent and incompetent people who have been given the idea that they are safe and secure however badly they behave. The executive chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology is one brazen case in point, but the prime minister - to whom Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is directly accountable - will not do anything to bring him into line because he fears becoming the victim of the very same viciousness he harnessed to his advantage before March 2013.
There is another important point which media reports and commentators have missed completely. The shell companies which Joe Sammut incorporated have, altogether, share capital of €85 million. As we have seen, this is largely fraudulent, held as fictitious stocks of perishables and household goods. Yet it will have racked up the foreign direct investment (FDI) figure by €85 million in just a few months, making it seem as though Malta has become so magnetically attractive due to government policy that €85 million of foreign direct investment has poured into the country in a few months. With those companies found to be fraudulent, €85 million have to be knocked off the FDI stats for the relevant period.
The Labour Party's sole response to the Opposition's accusations (the government has said nothing) is the usual hackneyed phrase that "the PN is being negative with tactics of the past". The entire scenario has changed since March 2013 and they're still playing the same scratched vinyl LP - well, that would be a B-side single, actually, for those who remember them. An LP has lots of tracks and the Labour Party's response-system has just the one.
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