It is only a matter of time before the chickens begin coming home to roost in the wake of the many corruption and money laundering scandals that are plaguing the country and its reputation. 

And, irrespective of whether the allegations that have led to the emergence of these scandals end up holding water at the end of the day or not, the authorities’ chronic inaction over them may very well have dire consequences on the country.

The number of articles about Malta’s corruption scandals making international headlines are growing by the day and while some may be shrugged off, others, such as that published by none other than The Economist this week, ignominiously titled “Shady island: Corruption allegations trouble tiny Malta”, are a cause for genuine concern.

Another cause for serious national concern are the rumours doing the rounds that the hard-earned robustness of Malta’s financial services sector is being called into question by some major international players who are either forgoing or postponing their intentions to do business with the country on account of the what they are hearing about us.

In today’s issue we highlight the case of a major German bank that has decided to no longer accept declarations issued by Maltese auditing firms and instead is insisting that firms’ German units vouch for the application of money laundering regulations in Malta if they are to accept such declarations.

This news, which has been verified, and similar anecdotes coming down through the grapevine are most troublesome indeed. This is, after all, not only about investment decisions being cast into temporary doubt, it is about the trickledown and contagion factor that such talk will inevitably foster.

The government may blame the Opposition for fomenting such allegations based on what it deems as complete lies, and the Opposition may blame the government for having some of its key players being knee-deep in corruption and money laundering activities.

But the truth is that it matters not who is to blame, what matters is that the country’s reputation is being slowly torn to shreds. Moreover, the fact of the matter is that this has all happened because of an institutional failure to investigate certain people who are deemed to be untouchables.

If such people had been investigated when they should have been, and if they had, through due process, been cleared or otherwise, the problems the country is facing as well as those on the horizon would have been much fewer and much further in between.

Much of the responsibility for such inaction, as has been reported recently, falls into the lap of the police force. If the police had, for example, investigated Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri after the outbreak of the Panama Papers, and as the Opposition had repeatedly requested it to do, much of the current turmoil could have been avoided. Instead, the police had insisted that ‘there is no reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, which might lead to an investigation’.

Could the police not have investigated and then found no reasonable suspicion, and in the process set at least some of the public’s minds to rest on the issue? Instead, because not a finger was lifted the issue still lingers over the country like a bad smell in a closed space.

The general feeling is that they did not investigate because the pair was deemed to be untouchable. And while whether they were deemed as such by the police of their own volition or because they were told as much remains to be seen, but for the time being the outcome remains the same.

The same goes for the report by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit report that landed on the police chief’s desk a year ago. That report had recommended an investigation into Schembri’s dubious financial manoeuvres but again, not a finger was lifted. The same also goes for the report last year from the European Union’s anti-fraud agency concerning former minister and EU Commissioner John Dalli, who later ingratiated himself with the current administration, as emerged this week. 

But it seems that in some of these cases police commissioners have preferred resignation to investigating the untouchables.

The untouchables are slowly but surely rendering Malta itself untouchable.