The above title is a quote taken from a speech delivered by the chief of the European Union’s financial crime watchdog.

Last week, Laura Codruţa Kövesi said that Malta is paying lip service in its efforts to crack down on EU fraud and corruption. Malta's authorities were unable to respond to simple questions on how they are tackling financial crime, she said.

Kövesi heads the Luxembourg-based European Public Prosecutor's Office. The office is tasked to crack down on VAT fraud and other financial crimes dealing with EU money.

"I visited Malta,” she said. “I had meetings with the national authorities and after two days it was very difficult for me to identify the institution that is responsible for detecting crimes. All of them said that 'it's not me. It's them.' And when I visited them, they said 'it's not us'."

Launched last June, the prosecutor’s office has so far seized some €147 million in assets, made arrests, and currently has 515 active investigations totalling an estimated €5.4 billion in damages, the EU Observer reported.

Malta is the only participating member that has not opened any investigation.

That says a lot.

What Kövesi said last week was picked up by NGO Repubblika, which on Saturday held a press conference in front of the law courts, accusing the Maltese authorities of doing nothing.

Maltese institutions, which include the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General, have failed to initiate prosecutions in court against people involved in corruption scandals, the NGO’s Robert Aquilina. Corruption leading to the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, as well as scandals post her death, have yet to be truly investigated and have persons involved prosecuted, he added.

Another election has passed, a new term has started, and Malta continues to face the same old problems when it comes to fighting corruption. These are the same issues that led Malta to be placed on the grey list by the Financial Action Task Force last year.

The Labour government, elected again in spite of all this (and other matters), says that it has made inroads in tackling financial crime, and yet here we are again, having a top European official singling out Malta for its lack of action. Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri on Monday said that our institutions have a very clear role. It’s clear that in Europe they do not share the same confidence.

What Kövesi said is not new. Independent media, NGOs such as Repubblika, and the Nationalist Party have been saying what Kövesi said last week for years. That it is unclear who is responsible for what, and which authority should be taking action, has been highlighted a myriad times.

And yet the Labour government persists in believing that everything is fine, often blaming opposition members of doing damage to Malta on the international stage, when the damage is being done by the government’s shortcomings. People like Kövesi do not need to have their strings pulled by PN officials to speak out on Malta’s faults. All they need to do is come over, as Kövesi said she did, to find out for themselves.