Since his appointment in June 2020, Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà has been asked to resign six times, apart from being harshly criticised on many other occasions.

So far, he has ignored these calls.

At the beginning of his term as Police Commissioner, Gafà had promised that under his watch, the Malta Police Force would “not hold back from investigating people in power”, should it be necessary. Most of the times he has been criticised, or asked to resign, is because this pledge, according to his detractors, was not fulfilled.

Gafà had succeeded Lawrence Cutajar as police commissioner after the latter had vacated his post in January 2020. Cutajar had denied claims that he had failed to investigate the serious Panama Papers allegations that involved top government officials. In May this year, Repubblika’s President Robert Aquilina stated that Gafà has ended up with the same reputation of inaction as Cutajar.

Before starting its calls for Gafa to resign, Repubblika had expressed its concern about the way the police chief was handling certain situations.

In July 2021, it had held a protest to push Gafa to take concrete action against high-profile figures who were implicated in crime and corruption scandals. Back then, after Gafa’s one-year probation had come to an end, the NGO had said that there “have seen no concrete results whatsoever” from the Police Commissioner. The NGO had expressed its frustration at his overall inaction since his appointment, warning him that “we didn’t come here asking for your resignation, but our patience is thinning”.

Resignation calls

But it is clear that Repubblika was not happy with the commissioner’s response, and it soon began its list of for Gafa to resign. Neither was the Nationalist Party, which later also called for his resignation.

1) The first resignation call came on 27 October 2021. Repubblika conducted a sit-in protest in front of the police headquarters to protest against the “impunity” which former energy minister Konrad Mizzi was benefitting from through “the police’s failure” to prosecute him over the Electrogas scandal.

Repubblika’s President Robert Aquilina challenged Gafà to resign after a man wrote online that he wished to bulldoze through the protesting activists. The civil society movement stated that Gafà not only refused to take action against this man, but the Police Commissioner also failed to provide any sort of protection to the protestors.

Aquilina told Newsbook that Gafà was refusing to react to this threat out of spite against the NGO and thus challenged him, “if he cannot take the heat, he should resign”. Aquilina also expressed his sentiment that Police Commissioner Gafà “cannot tolerate any criticism”.

2) The second resignation call came on 8 June 2022, less than a year later. After giving the COP “enough time” and chances for him to settle into his position, Repubblika stated that they had “completely lost hope” in Gafà possibly righting any of his predecessor’s wrongs. A protest was once again held in front of police headquarters, this time with a large banner reading out “Irriżenja” (“Resign”).

Repubblika had said that the Malta Police Force was still in the same state that the conclusions from the Daphne Caruana Galizia described it to be in, i.e., it was still “a police force of impunity, omerta, friends of friends, tolerance to corruption, and inaction in the face of rampant criminality”. In this regard, Robert Aquilina had stated that Police Commissioner Gafà had “fostered a culture of injustice and division in the police force”.

The NGO was putting Police Commissioner Gafà under some pressure by repeatedly calling for serious police action to be taken to effectively tackle high-profile corruption cases. The straw that broke the camel’s back at the time was the handling of arrest warrants and proceedings on Iosif Galea.

Galea – a former compliance officer at the Gaming Authority back when it was called the Lotteries and Gaming Authority – was arrested by Italian authorities through the fulfilment of a European arrest warrant submitted by German authorities. Galea was arrested on charges of money laundering and financial crime while he was on holiday with a group of friends that included the disgraced former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

Local civil society was frustrated that Maltese authorities only filed action on Galea after foreign authorities had fulfilled his arrest. Galea was only extradited from Germany to Malta to be charged with financial crime in August 2023, despite his arrest warrant being issued in 2021 and his arrest occurring in mid-2022.

3) The third resignation call came on 2 October 2022 from PN leader Bernard Grech during a national protest on declining quality of life. Speaking to thousands on a myriad of topics, Grech criticised the country’s police.

“The leaders of the police force in the last nine and a half years – including the present police commissioner – have demoralised the straight members of the police corps that we have a lack of security in the country, with the commissioner taking credit for what those beneath him do and not taking responsibility for his own shortcomings,” he said.

Mentioning Iosif Galea’s incident, Grech said that Angelo Gafà “had to shoulder responsibility and resign for the force’s shortcomings”.

4) Following the tragic femicide of Bernice Cassar, both Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà and Security and Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri were called to resign on 23 November 2022. Repubblika had argued that certain decisions and actions taken by the pair “had a direct consequence that exposed Bernice Cassar to clear danger and eventually to the brutal end of her life”.

A decision had been made two years earlier for all domestic violence reports to be centralised, making it more difficult for domestic violence victims to reach out to authorities due to a lack of time and available resources.

“Therefore, we see no other pathway that, independently from the inquiry, Minister Camilleri and Commissioner Gafà must immediately assume responsibility for their announced decisions from 30 November 2020 and that they both resign”, Repubblika had stated. It was reported that following this centralisation, domestic violence victims were made to wait in hours-long queues that either made them give up seeking help or made filing a report feel impractical. Therefore, many victims often went back to the homes where they were being abused without actually filing a report.

5) On 21 March 2023 came the fourth resignation call. Repubblika once again called for the double resignation of both Police Commissioner Gafà and of Minister Byron Camilleri following several delays for the search of Enemalta’s offices to be executed as part of the investigations into the Montenegro wind farm deal. This forced the entire probe into the Mozura wind farm project to stall.

The Mozura wind farm project faced lots of scrutiny due to the alleged underhand dealings which were brought to light through an investigation by Reuters and Times of Malta. These investigations found that 17 Black – the Dubai company owned by Yorgen Fenech – made a profit of €4.6 million in December 2015 through this Enemalta purchase.

Despite Prime Minister Robert Abela saying he was “disgusted” by the Enemalta scandal, police had ignored magisterial directives that instructed them to conduct related searches, according to the NGO. “Instead, the police let months and years pass by and when pressure increased, the police warned suspects that they are coming”. They also described how Abela chose to retain both Camilleri and Gafà “who made it their mission to protect Joseph Muscat and his associates Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi, and Yorgen Fenech”.

Maltese MEP David Casa also grilled the Police Commissioner, saying that “as more time passes, the Police Commissioner, responsible for prosecuting crime, instead continues to defend it”.

6) The Police Commissioner’s most recent call for resignation came on 11 May 2023. Repubblika sought Police Commissioner Gafà’s resignation following his inaction in the face of the Pilatus Bank revelations. These revelations held that police actively refrained from prosecuting officials from the now defunct Pilatus Bank.

The NGO’s President, Robert Aquilina, had published a series of e-mails in which three police inspectors were discussing how they felt compelled to justify the decision not to prosecute Pilatus Bank former officials. A magisterial inquiry had recommended that money-laundering charges to be brought against them before this was revealed in Aquilina’s book “Pilatus: A laundromat bank in Europe”.

“Angelo Gafà is the biggest threat to justice taking course in our country,” said Aquilina, “In three years as Police Commissioner, he has not charged any big fish that broke the law; the only people who have peace of mind are the corrupt clique”. In this context, Aquilina said that Gafà had “staged a cover-up” through his inaction on prominent cases like 17 Black, Electrogas, Panama Papers, the Montenegro wind farms, the sale of Maltese hospitals, and the abuse and money-laundering.

Constant criticism

Police Commissioner Gafà’s tenure has been marked with constant backlash for the vast majority of his term.

Contacted by The Malta Independent on Sunday, the PN’s spokesperson for Home Affairs, Security and Reforms, Joe Giglio, said that while the COP is obliged to do his job, “he is not doing enough”.

“On the contrary, he is coming down heavily on small fry but remains inactive to address the higher echelons of corruption,” he said.

In this regard, he reiterated PN’s negative opinion on COP Angelo Gafà, describing how as a result of his own actions, “this has led the PN to not have any more trust in the way the COP is running the Police Force. PN does not have trust in Gafà,” Giglio stated.

“Gafà is clearly not fit for office,” he said, adding that reform is much needed in the corps “to attract new recruits and ensure police officers do not leave”.

Repeating PN’s opinion that the Police Force is “overworked, overstretched and definitely not overpaid”, the Nationalist MP mentioned the existing demotivation within the Force, saying that it is not being properly addressed.

The PN has criticised Gafa on other occasions.

In late August of this year, PN leader Bernard Grech called for an investigation to be held on the allegations of electoral fraud by the Labour Party. He criticized Gafà in this light, adding that he must “wake up” and investigate the allegations that PL was using the identities of some deceased people to fraudulently add votes in their favour. Grech also commented that the COP was “scared of stepping on people’s toes” as a reason behind his controversial reputation.

Following the recent driving licence scandal, Nationalist MP Adrian Delia expressed his disbelief that no politician has been charged following the revelations of this massive controversy. Referencing Gafà in this context, he had said in a PN press conference that “the police commissioner must be living on another planet”.

These two recent criticisms are just two examples in a long list of public comments that have been stated against the Police Commissioner.

Questions were sent to the Police Commissioner to ask for his perspective on these resignation calls, including if he believes these calls were substantiated, if he believes he has always acted accordingly to the duties of his prestigious position, on his seemingly broken pledge from the start of his term, and on why he has not resigned in the face of these repeated public pressures.

The Malta Police Force replied, telling this newsroom that “Whilst respecting the right to freedom of speech, the Commissioner of Police and other senior police officers have over the past months and years been a constant target of sectored biased arguments which are not factual”.

“The Malta Police Force is focused on ensuring a safe and secure society. The outcome of police investigations are presented in the respective fora, including in ongoing judicial proceedings,” the police said.