Consider this thought experiment.  A commissioner colludes with a group of businessmen and signs a deal to let them build new headquarters, develop an academy and provide much needed resources to improve the running of a country.  Those businessmen bind themselves to invest two hundred million euro in the deal although they had no experience and have no money.   

The ink on the deal isn’t dry before it becomes abundantly clear those businessmen aren’t bringing in any investment.  They’re not interested in improving the situation.

They fail their legal requirements. They don’t build those headquarters or the academy.  Yet the commissioner asks his deputy and his most senior officers to authorise him to pay them millions of taxpayers’ money and to waive their legal obligations, repeatedly.

Months turn to years and still those businessmen fail to bring a penny.  None of their promised projects are even planned, let alone completed.  But the commissioner keeps asking his consultant and his deputy to allow him to pay them more millions.  He asks to change the terms of the original contract making it more favourable for those businessmen. His deputy repeatedly consents.

For five long years the commissioner continues to funnel taxpayers’ millions to those businessmen.  For years they fail to meet their obligations.  And for years his deputy endorses the payment of millions to the commissioner’s friends.

Eventually the commissioner steps down. Within weeks he starts receiving tens of thousands of euro every month from those businessmen.

The former commissioner ensures that his deputy doesn’t become commissioner. Instead the former commissioner engineers the coronation of his consultant and friend as the new commissioner.  The deputy remains deputy. They both know exactly what’s been going on.  They know how many hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money were stolen from the people. So what do they do?

The new commissioner and his deputy waive those businessmen’s legal obligations again.  They conspire to funnel more millions to those businessmen.  Months and years pass and still those businessmen do nothing of what they promised.  There’s still no headquarters and no academy.  They still haven’t invested a penny.  The new commissioner and his deputy spend three whole years working on a better “more bankable” deal for those businessmen.  They hand over 257 million in taxpayers’ money.

The National Audit Office investigates that deal.  It finds it was completely rotten.  But the new commissioner and his deputy keep pumping millions into it.

Finally the citizens have had enough. They ask the court to investigate.  Not once but twice the court rules the commissioner’s deal was fraudulent and that senior officers colluded with those businessmen to take millions of taxpayers’ money.  But nothing happens.

The citizens are furious.  They demand a magisterial inquiry.  While the magistrate diligently works to uncover the intricate web behind the deal, the new commissioner relentlessly attacks the magistrate and attempts to intimidate her. But the magistrate focuses on her work. She finally publishes her findings.  The people were right all along.  The deal was a fraud.

The former police commissioner is charged with bribery, corruption and other serious crimes. Nobody’s surprised. Everybody knew what he was up to.

But then his deputy is also charged.  The court decides he too has “a case to answer”. The court rules there are enough reasons to charge him with misappropriation of public funds. Everybody seemed stunned.  But the court explains.  The deputy never voted against, or showed his opposition to, the commissioner’s requests to pay the gang more millions. The court clarified that the deputy was always part of those decisions. Despite knowing those businessmen had dismally failed their obligations he still voted to pay them and authorised payments himself.

The deputy commissioner was duty bound to prevent that corrupt deal, that blatant daylight robbery from state coffers.  “Those who had the duty of protecting the interest of the state, instead of safeguarding those interests, gave one extension after another to hide the fact that the contract was just a front and not ‘the real deal’ and continued to pay millions of euro to those who failed miserably to play their part,” the court ruled.

The court explained that the deputy must face a criminal trial - for two main reasons.  First he never objected and voted willingly to let his commissioner continue to pass on the money to the businessmen.  He personally authorised the payment of millions of euro.  But he’d also negotiated with them directly to strike a new deal.  He personally proposed new waivers and paid millions more even after the old commissioner stepped down.

The people realised the court was right. The deputy was part of it.  He could have stopped the deal, or at least could have tried.  He didn’t.  Instead he enabled it and contributed to the fraud. He was part of that collusion. He helped them take our money.

But there’s one very strange fact. The deputy wasn’t alone.  The former commissioner’s consultant who became commissioner did exactly the same, if not worse.  If the deputy has a case to answer for, what about the commissioner? After all he was the deputy’s boss.  He could have stopped that daylight robbery. 

Instead he chose to give the gang more waivers and more millions.  He viciously attacked the magistrate who was diligently doing her duty. He desperately tried to convince the nation of the great benefits the gang brought the people. He protected his friend and former boss, the original commissioner. He let him continue to use his publicly funded office. He continued to pay for his wife’s car.

The new commissioner did far worse than his deputy.

So why isn’t Robert Abela in the dock?