Opinion: Another attack on Malta?

One Saturday morning in August 2021, the secretary of Balzan’s Labour Party club met then Parliamentary Secretary Alex Muscat at his office in Mosta. Muscat wanted Balzan’s club secretary, *Aziz, to help him with his 2022 election campaign.

A few weeks later, the two met again at Sunny Bar in Balzan. Aziz complained that his reports about serious corruption at Transport Malta had fallen on deaf ears.  Muscat allegedly warned Aziz that he had the power to obliterate him from Malta.

Aziz has now taken his allegations to court and offered to testify before a magisterial inquiry. He’s named Alex Muscat in that application.

Aziz had been living in Malta since 23 November 2006.  He joined the Labour Party in 2008 and was soon appointed as secretary of Balzan’s Labour Party club. His task was to attract new voters to Labour from among the Muslim community and to arrange meetings with party officials.  He was also raising funds for Labour.

In 2015 Aziz became an interpreter for Transport Malta. He witnessed serious abuse there.  He tried to blow the whistle with Ian Borg’s consultant and chief canvasser Jesmond Zammit, who was subsequently made an advisor to the foreign office when Borg was made foreign affairs minister.

Aziz spoke to Sandro Craus, head of Castille’s Customer Care Office and now facing prosecution over his involvement in Melvin Theuma’s phantom job.  He even spoke to Carmelo Abela, who was found guilty of ethics breaches.

They all laughed him off, Aziz claimed.

So on 1 November 2020, Aziz provided the Financial Crimes Investigations Department with evidence of corruption and manipulation of driving licensing exams to favour selected candidates backed by an unnamed minister. Clint Mansueto, a Transport Malta director, used to insist with him that those candidates must pass their exam because they were recommended by the minister.

Based on Aziz’s evidence, Mansueto is being prosecuted over the corruption racket.  Philip Eldrick Zammit, a Zebbug Labour councillor, has also been charged over the criminal scheme. Several witnesses have already testified and confirmed the veracity of Aziz’s accusations.

Mansueto himself told investigators he “felt pressured” to help certain individuals pass their test “because they were working at a villa belonging to a minister”.

One examiner testified that the favoured candidates were so bad that he would drive them back after the test because they were a “danger to the public”.

Aziz’s information was allegedly conveniently ignored by Jesmond Zammit, Sandro Craus and Carmelo Abela.

But Alex Muscat is accused of going a step further. He allegedly warned Aziz that he had the power “to obliterate him from Malta”.  And that’s what happened.

After almost 15 years living in Malta, the man who’d blown the whistle on Labour’s corruption had his residence permit revoked.  He was driven out of Malta.  He blames Alex Muscat.

The former parliamentary secretary denies all accusations. He’s calling the information provided in Aziz’s court application “baseless allegations” and “a lie”. But Muscat also alleged in his Facebook post that Aziz “threatened he would pay me back”.

Muscat was the parliamentary secretary responsible for citizenship at the time.  He was responsible for Identity Malta.  Yet he never reported those threats to the police.  He didn’t go to the police with the information Aziz gave him about the corruption at TM either. Alex Muscat kept everything under wraps.

Did he advise the whistleblower to go to the police? And why didn’t he report Aziz for threatening him?  “What was written about me in this application are just lies,” Muscat announced on Facebook.

Alex Muscat has quite a habit of retaliating when information about him is leaked. When the Passport Papers identified him as the contact person in Castille for Henley & Partners’ needs, he was quick to target them.  The Passport Papers was a collaborative investigation conducted by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, The Guardian and Dossier Center together with The Shift, Lovin Malta, MaltaToday, The Malta Independent, and The Times of Malta.

They diligently exposed e-mails showing that Alex Muscat was tasked with making arrangements to “avoid grief” for Henley’s clients. He was responsible for coordinating the arrival of passport applicants, discussing their itineraries and determining the resources needed to ensure a positive experience for these applicants.

Yet Muscat claimed he had “no role” in the passports-for-cash scheme.  Those e-mails with Henley & Partners proved otherwise.

Instead of admitting to his involvement, Muscat attacked the Passport Papers collaboration.  He claimed that “this is an attack on Malta”.

He advised, “My appeal to the news media is don’t let anyone take advantage of you, be objective, be honest”.

The media organisations involved were being honest.  They were exposing the truth.  Those emails were authentic. They produced hard evidence to back up their claims about Alex Muscat.

Yet Muscat resorted to the public vilification of those media organisations. He even attacked the opposition party to deflect attention from his own embarrassing behaviour.  “One particular threat to the investment was the incessant harassment carried out exclusively by the PN,” his official statement read.

While Muscat was ironing things out for passport applicants, he was earning thousands of euros from Brian Tonna’s Nexia BT. Muscat admitted he hadn’t asked permission to work for Tonna while also working at the Office of the Prime Minister.

Alex Muscat was Keith Schembri’s deputy. Tonna’s Nexia BT had set up Schembri’s secret financial structures in Panama. Tonna, meanwhile, was selling passports and transferring €100,000 into Schembri’s Pilatus Bank account. Tonna is now facing charges of money laundering, forgery and other crimes. Yet Alex Muscat testified before the Caruana Galizia inquiry: “I didn’t change my mind on Nexia BT because as far as I know Nexia BT’s accountants did nothing illegal.”

Robert Abela did change his mind about Alex Muscat – and swiftly dropped him from cabinet.

Alex Muscat is now attacking the whistleblower who exposed the corruption at Transport Malta. He’s accusing Aziz of lying.  He’s claiming he threatened him. “I am not going to allow any false allegations to tarnish my reputation,” Muscat declared.

Next thing he’ll claim the whistleblower’s court application is “an attack on Malta”.

* Not his real name.