This week, in my capacity as chair of the Public Accounts Committee, together with my colleagues in the Nationalist Party Parliamentary group, MPs Graham Bencini and Claudette Buttigieg, we placed an official request to the Auditor General, to investigate the national agencies Identitá, and all relevant ministries in connection with all the shocking revelations related to the Identitá scandal. This is a separate investigation from the Magisterial Inquiry that has been requested by lawyer Jason Azzopardi. I wish that investigation every success in its own remit.

The Identitá scandal has now reached unprecedented heights, and requires a serious investigation, which will go down to the bottom of things. The country deserves to know what was happening behind closed doors, who was abusing of the trust placed in them by the state, and what the full repercussions of this scandal were.

We can already understand that the ID cards racket has punched holes into Malta’s credibility and its ability to issue reliable identification for its people. The ramifications of this are far-reaching to say the least, impinging on issues of national security.

However, it appears that the racket extends even further than this, as allegations of identity theft are being floated quite persistently.

By now, we have all heard about the wrongly addressed letters saga, which at first sounded like an innocent administrative mistake, but quickly revealed something far more sinister.

In our request to the Office of the Auditor General, in fact, we requested a full investigation of these cases, to understand where they have been stemming from, and why. It is apparent that both private as well as public entities have fallen into the chaos, warranting a serious investigation.

We can only deduce, given the facts at hand, that Identitá has been issuing ID cards featuring addresses that do not belong to the ID card holders. This means that Identitá has some very serious questions to answer about its due diligence procedures, and procedures of verification across the board.

This means that potentially, one can only presume that individuals have been using these illegal documents to obtain services they are not essentially entitled for, in flagrant breach of the law. Hence the wrongly addressed letters.

One shudders to think how such a racket was allowed to take place, at such a sensitive government agency. How some members of staff at Identitá, as well as the relevant ministries must have been ‘in on it’, to allow for its smooth running. 

It is evident that at Identitá a band of criminals have wiped their feet in anything we all hold dear – ethical standards and law, for their own personal gains.

We mustn’t paint everyone with the same broad strokes, however. That is why I feel duty-bound to express my support and thanks to the honest hardworking employees at Identitá who have always carried out their work, without fear or favour. A new Nationalist administration will make sure they will gain the dignity and reputation that the agency has lost under Labour.

Consecutive Labour administrations have managed to solidify a legacy for corruption and scandals over the years. Be it under Robert Abela’s leadership or Joseph Muscat’s before him, Labour has expressed a penchant for corruption from day one - one embarrassing episode after the other. Of course, each scandal is serious in its own right because every last tax-payer euro that is ill-spent is a serious crime which ought to be investigated and taken extremely seriously.

Yet, the Identitá scandal is in a league of its own.

I will surely be doing all I can in all my capacities at law, to see that we get to the bottom of this saga.

Dr Darren Carabott is the Opposition’s Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, Security and Reforms, and President of the Public Accounts Committee.