On Thursday, the finance minister unveiled a raft of major reforms to strengthen the country’s fight against financial crime.

A new Financial Organised Crime Agency to investigate and prosecute the most serious cases of money laundering and financial crime will be established, as will a new Police Prosecution Unit to accelerate the prosecution of serious cases and the Asset Recovery Bureau has been given enhanced powers.

On paper, we appear to be ticking all the correct boxes but just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so too the proof of the investigation will be in the prosecution.

That is because you can have the finest plans imaginable to combat the scourge of financial crime on paper, but if investigator’s findings are not followed up through the chain, then those fine designs are not even worth the paper on which they are printed.

In how many instances have we seen the sterling reports drafted by the country’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit after their own excruciatingly detailed investigations simply be shelved somewhere at the Floriana police headquarters to gather dust, rather than suspects and evidence?

It is of very little use having these grand set-ups if the people who are committing the crimes enjoy the protection of the highest echelons of government.

What would be the point, for example, of this new set-up to investigate the graft being perpetrated by people in government if the police then refuse, for one reason or another, to investigate and prosecute?

We are still left with perhaps more fraud being perpetrated by the small fry being uncovered while that that of the big fish is perennially ignored.

The problem in this country was never with the investigation of financial crimes, the problem has always been with the prosecution of the untouchables of this country.

“Today we go further,” the finance minister said on Thursday, “announcing sweeping new reforms that clearly outline and demarcate investigative and prosecutorial responsibilities that will, we believe, increase investigations that result in prosecutions.”

The sentiment is appreciated but does the good minister really believe that the financial crimes of some of his own colleagues – which are some of the most serious the country has seen – will actually ever be prosecuted?

The fact of the matter is that the government has been literally pushed into making these grand gestures and sweeping new agencies ands set-ups, but one highly doubts it is ready to put its figurative money where its mouth is and prosecute any of its own.

And it is because of this one simple fact – that the small fry will be better prosecuted while the big fish are left to swim freely – that makes the whole triumphant announcement more a matter of window dressing.

It is also a clear exercise in damage control. Malta is being hauled over the hot coals for its lax attitude toward financial crimes and money laundering, as can be clearly evidenced by the task it is consistently being taken to by the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and others.

These are just the pressures that we know about, let alone the diplomatic pressure applied behind closed doors that our government ministers are no doubt subjected to more often than not by their peers.

This brings us to what is perhaps one of the greatest yet most understated problems facing the country’s financial services sector: Bank of Valletta’s loss of its US dollar correspondent banks.

If there was perhaps one litmus test to be applied to the sector, it is other banks’ faith. And that appears to have been lost when it comes to BOV. This one is truly a case of the chickens coming home to roost. All the turmoil within our financial services sector, mostly brought on by the government’s dereliction of duty and a failure to prosecute when necessary, has left BOV, which is of fundamental systemic importance to the country, high and dry without anyone to process its US dollar transactions.

The government may sugar coat the development, paint it any colour or apply as many layers of foundation to the ugly affair as it likes, but the simple fact of the matter is that no amount of cosmetics will cover up the fact that trust in the country’s financial services sector has been decimated to the point that the big banks on the global stage do not want to do business with it.

The truth of the matter may have less to do with Bank of Valletta’s credentials and more to do with the country’s lost credentials as a serious financial services centre, which had been carefully crafted up until 2013 and which, since then, has been brought into no significant amount of disrepute.

Dutch bank ING was BOV’s last standing US dollar correspondent bank but after being slapped with a fine of hundreds of millions of euros for money laundering violations, it is looking to sever ties with jurisdictions that it considers too risky for its appetite. Two years ago, Deutsche Bank had similarly stopped its US dollar service with BOV.

But the fact of the matter is that this has been a long time coming and the writing on the wall has been there in plain sight for a long time now.

One of the world’s leading credit rating agencies, Standard and Poor’s, recently, and quite uncharacteristically, slammed the situation in Malta, reporting that allegations of money laundering at Pilatus Bank, the arrest of its chairman in the United States, where he is facing up to 25 years in jail for money laundering and sanctions busting, as well as the perception of poor transparency at some banks, have increased reputational and operational risks for the Maltese banking sector as a whole. Those risks, according to the agency, increased the Maltese sector’s overall risk rating for the entire sector from a four to a six-out-of-10.

Did we really think no one was listening when they said that, or that no one was looking our way when it came to Pilatus Bank, the Panama Papers and all the other funny business?

Well, guess what? They were.