Clean up your act, or someone else will

The United States sent a clear message to Malta yesterday, but was anyone listening?

Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi have joined over 149 public officials and their immediate family from countries like Albania, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia (where officials were linked to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi) in being banned from travel to the United States.

The embassy wouldn’t comment on whether Joseph Muscat was on the State Department’s radar for sanctions of his own.

It’s another dubious honour of the Muscat era, along with the disgraced former prime minister being named 2019 Person of the Year for Organized Crime and Corruption, and being relegated to the FATF grey list of countries under increased monitoring for money laundering and terrorist financing.

The fallout suffered by businesses and individuals from the island’s increasingly shady reputation — such as Bank of Valletta customers being relegated to Western Union for US dollar transactions — is more difficult to assess.

You might be wondering what effect disrupting Mizzi and Schembri’s travel plans will have on Malta.

A US embassy official made it very clear to me that these sanctions are based on “credible information of direct or indirect involvement in significant corruption”.

“The United States is committed to promoting accountability for those involved in significant corruption and will continue to use all tools available to combat corruption globally,” they said. The email ended on an ominous note, warning, “we continue to monitor investigations into corruption in Malta closely”.

A former diplomat I spoke with described this as “a rare rebuke of an otherwise friendly country”.

“The State Department doesn’t sanction just anyone who is suspected of significant acts of corruption,” he said. “It only does this when the prospects of domestic prosecution are weak. This is why we only read about cases from countries with high rates of impunity”.

Allow me to offer a helpful translation for the many Muscat appointees with little experience in the language of diplomacy, like former water polo coach and Ambassador to Montenegro Karl Izzo, UK High Commissioner Manuel Mallia, and Honorary Consul to North Macedonia Matthew Fenech.

The US has lost patience with Malta’s plodding investigations into these extremely serious cases of corruption, and they expect results.

The FBI was instrumental in identifying the hitmen who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia, flying in technical experts to assist Malta police in tracking the signal used to detonate the bomb.

The embassy offered to help with investigations again, posting a statement on the second anniversary of the journalist’s death, saying, “It is not too late for Malta to bring Daphne’s killer to justice in a credible manner”.

Their comment on the 19 bomb attacks the island has suffered since 2010 — “too many remained unsolved” — suggested they had something concrete to offer, but Joseph Muscat’s government said ‘No thank you, we have full faith in our own investigators’. He neglected to add ‘because we can control them’.

Two more turbulent years have passed. Yorgen Fenech was arrested while trying to run away. Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi and Chris Cardona were questioned by police. And Muscat was driven from office by a month of public protests.

The complication of evidence in the various cases connected with the murder have ground along like rusted gears, but clearer results were provided by the hard-fought public inquiry that found the State directly responsible for Daphne’s death.

And that’s where things continue to sit.

Two years after Malta refused the American offer of help, impatience was obvious in the embassy’s next statement. On October 2021, they called for “a thorough, transparent, timely, and credible conclusion to the investigations into the murder”.

Needless to say, this hasn’t happened.

As a former diplomat explained to me, Schembri and Mizzi are now on a global — and highly public — list of offenders, “and there is now strong pressure on the Maltese police to finally prosecute them”.

Any financial institution that serves these clients should take note that they do so at increased risk.

As for the toxic two, the American connection to Vitals by way of Steward Healthcare should be keeping them awake at night. US charges could be pending under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

It’s up to Robert Abela to decide whether he’s more afraid of the Americans or of his own predecessor. If he isn’t willing to serve justice locally, he risks having Malta’s dirty laundry done in a place where bribing foreign officials comes with prison terms and fines of up to $21,663 per violation.

But all of this will have to wait.

The prime minister is busy being ‘hurt, even on a personal level’ over the resignation of unrepentant Education Minister Justyne Caruana for handing plum government contracts to her unqualified boyfriend, and the loss of MP Silvio Grixti, who had the rare good sense to resign when he was placed under police investigation.

Such resignations are shockingly uncommon in Malta, where public officials must be dragged from power in the most undignified manner, digging their fingernails into their desks and wrapping their legs around their chairs. It only happens on the rare occasions when the usual denial and bluster hasn’t worked.

Abela tried to portray this slight glimpse of normality as a dramatic shift, rather than the sort of thing which should have happened all along, telling One Radio, “Since January 2020 we have brought in higher standards, a culture of change, something which the opposition never practiced”.

All the whataboutism in the world won’t change the fact that those guilty of the worst looting of public funds remain untouchable.

The world is watching, and the world expects action — but will police commissioner Angelo Gafa get the message?

The carrot has just been replaced by a very heavy stick.