Two weeks ago, one of Giovanni Falcone’s anti-sympathisers wrote that the judge was over-rated, “exalted beyond his merits” and was only focused on building his career. He was already known for calling Falcone a “cretino”. It was former Appeals Judge Corrado Carnevale, now in his 90s, who wrote this while Italy was reliving its turbulent past and commemorating the giorno della legalità 30 years since the assassination of Falcone, his wife and police guards.

Carnevale got the nickname of ammazza sentenze – judgement slayer – for overturing quite a number of Mafia judgements, including some delivered during the maxi processo and doing so over procedural technicalities. The controversy might have stemmed from personal clashes somewhere, somehow, but it snowballed and impacted persons and institutions for years to come. Years after Capaci, Carnevale was also investigated for criminal association but eventually returned to the Bench. But the bitterness remains.

There always seems to be an ammazza sentenze or even a justice slayer, lurking around in the shadows in the same vein that Cain threw shade on Abel’s sacrifices and honest, good work. Maybe that’s where it started, with sin crouching at the door, corrupting the system.

There is so much to write about the Greco’s compliance report for Malta, adopted in September 2021 and published in Brussels just recently, on 24 May. It focused on promoting integrity of central government and law enforcement agencies. Malta’s report was actually sent in December 2020, with subsequent updates on three other occasions.

Incidentally, two days before Greco’s publication, the LIBE committee MEPs visited Malta to look into its progress on several issues as recommended by the Monitoring Group on Democracy, Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights (DRFMG). So it was a busy week, with the EU Commission’s Group of States against Corruption (Greco) and EU Parliament MEPs of the Civil Liberties Committee focusing on Malta’s track record.

What Greco concluded was as abysmal as LIBE’s observations and comments to the media. Malta had 23 recommendations to follow and only made it fully to two, as the rest were either partially adopted or not adopted at all. The two that were implemented concerned police training in ethics and integrity. The report spoke of the initiative of including these subject areas in new police training as well as in-service refresher courses.

This is what bothers me personally and professionally: is that all that Malta could make progress on since April 2019, when the previous Greco evaluation report was published? So between April 2019 and September 2021, the only fully successful outcomes were just two and it was just paper evidence that training had taken place and exams undertaken. There’s more to handling the issue than teaching the subject for an hour once every rare in-service training course that comes along.

That’s the easiest part of the entire exercise, as there are other ways and means of measuring that apart from the number of officers attending the training. How does one explain, for instance, the outburst of the Academy’s own leadership in a personal Facebook post, urging Opposition MPs to be pelted on their return to Parliament? Talk of ammazza sentenze, of overturning the only two recommendations that were fully applauded by Greco.

There were other instances that uncovered a lack of integrity and ethics just this week alone. Simply look at the media’s coverage of how a Maltese person with a European Arrest Warrant, issued against him by another EU member state, was toying with Malta’s immigration police. As easy as pie, it seems.

And that’s just one case. Call in the retired judge to investigate, demanded a few, out of a combination of shock at the incident and at the possibility that the whole system might be even more corrupt than they ever thought it was already.

So what’s next? Any other killjoys and justice slayer headlines to add for the next evaluation reports? The track record speaks for itself.

It’s interesting how the day before we had a new minister in Parliament revelling in joy and positivity at having impressed Greco with those two recommendations.