We know very well how we got there. Up till a few years back, Malta’s name in Europe suggested sun, sea and maybe that queer old Dom. Now it largely suggests corruption, money laundering, passport sales and worse. This reputation is largely unfair. The thousands of Maltese and foreign professionals and corporates based here have little to nothing to do with the sleaze pushing us here. But we know very well that reputation is not an exact science. It is not truly bothered with fairness either.
And so the hammer of the FATF fell and sealed that unfairness onto the thousands who do not deserve it. We know the story well enough. I will not go there today. Instead, I would like to share with you a few personal experiences of people I met recently. All are paying for Robert Abela’s government bravado of getting us on the greylist.
The first one is possibly most touching. Benjamin (all names changed except Robert Abela’s) graduated with a first degree in Law and a Masters in Business Administration. Although recently graduated in 2018, he was flying high in the profession – changing jobs last year to move a scale higher in a new financial services company. He had a management level job.
The greylist judgement in June was a direct clash with his probation. In August he was told his services will no longer be needed. The company is scaling down to whether the diminishing demand on the horizon. He is now on the job market offering a specialisation which now seems to be less in demand.
The second case relates to Ċetta. Her son is a tile layer. A bachelor at fifty-five. She prepares his meals and pays his bills since as long as she can remember. He reimburses her in cash. Recently she realised that her cash stash was no longer a good idea. She went to the bank to deposit 8,500 euro. The bank treated her like it should have treated Konrad Mizzi. Ċetta was asked for proof of ‘source of capital’. She could not understand how we got there. She ended up depositing only half that sum. The rest stays in the stash. Hopefully she may return to deposit it in small turns every few weeks. Poor Ċetta ended up having to play the money-launder game.
Michael is a business owner. Last year he inherited a property which he sold this year. Now he wants to buy his own place and is seeking a bank loan to bridge the sum needed. The bank undertook a detailed scrutiny of his income over the last three years finding a few loopholes which Michael himself can hardly explain in detail. He was told that what escaped the attention of the Inland Revenue department three years ago may be put on the table once again this year. He triggered his accountant already. His loan seems to be less easy than he thought it would be. He is worried about his promise of sale and wants to punish himself for not making the sale subject to bank loan.
Martina is a bank employee. Her job is to process loan requests just like the one for Michael. Martina loved her job until a few months back. Now she is not sure. Her managers and the instructions from authorities have turned her job description from ‘service with a smile’ into a stern money laundering cop. Every day she has to face clients with ever more detailed questions on most intimate intentions and histories of money.
This is where the labour sleaze got us. It will get worse than this. Robert Abela made it very clear at his address to MCESD in June when he basically suggested businesses to start reporting each other for money laundering.
It has come to this. Malta was a very business friendly place until the Labour sun rose on the horizon. Now it is heading to become a business nightmare. Abela is making it very clear to all wanting to read his lips. This will have to get worse before it gets any better and the Government will not be going out of its way to make it any easier for us.
Iceland got out of the Greylist in less than a year. Technically, Malta, having passed the Moneyval assessment ’with flying colours’ (Abela’s words) should be out before that. Bernard Grech made a bold commitment in July: Malta can be out of Greylist after three months of PN government. Some say Dr Grech is too bold. I say it depends on where the deadlock is. If we take the FATF’s President’s own words Malta has shown a lack of credibility in implementation of existing laws to fight Money laundering. This is therefore a question of trust.
If you change the dog at the top then you have a different trust climate altogether. Assuming we have an election in November, Bernard Grech’s commitment to take Malta out of Greylist by March 2022 is indeed a very welcome predicament. What is Robert Abela’s alternative? – oh yes – he wants a minimum of 18 months to take us back to white list. Abela should tell that to Benjamin, Ċetta, Michael and Martina. It is way easier to print billboards with empty taglines sitting on a deficit of 1,6 billion a year.
The people are getting angry. They will get angrier by the minute. Abela has only one way to scrape some more years in charge of a ship loosing water as it goes, he must keep everyone hypnotised with his propaganda hoping people will take time to understand how much his labour party is taking us for a ride.
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