Moral lessons for India from Malta’s most wanted

Joseph Muscat, Malta’s disgraced former prime minister, emerged as a guest speaker at Gujarat’s Parul University – delivering moral lessons on leadership, responsibility, and the role of youth. The irony.

Against a backdrop of corruption allegations, asset-freezing orders, and criminal charges for money laundering and fraud, Muscat has chosen not to face the music at home, but instead to gallivant across countries like a washed-up motivational speaker desperate to stay relevant.

The social media reel presents him as a seasoned statesman offering “impactful insights”.

 

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This is a man who, while in office, oversaw what has been described as a state capture of Malta—a premiership drenched in cronyism, backroom deals, and a climate so toxic it culminated in the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

And yet, there he stood in Vadodara, straight-faced and preaching about the virtues of “meaningful governance”—as though his name weren’t currently etched into multiple criminal investigations.

As though he hadn’t personally presided over the Electrogas debacle, green-lit the collapse of Malta’s public hospitals to private grifters, and accepted consultancy gigs the minute he walked out of Castille with the ink on his resignation still wet.

To anyone familiar with Maltese politics, this charade is nothing new. Muscat is merely following a trail blazed earlier by another national embarrassment – former EU Commissioner John Dalli.

In 2021, Dalli too was found cavorting with Indian business interests—a tycoon with a keen eye on Gozo’s pristine Dwejra coastline, eyeing development on the protected Natura 2000 site.

Dalli denied any involvement, of course. But as The Shift revealed, he even helped the Indian obtain a Maltese passport.

In 2022, Dalli was charged with bribery and trading in influence over a tobacco lobbying scandal that caused his resignation more than a decade ago.

Muscat seems eager to replicate the formula: disappear from scrutiny, pop up in India, adopt the posture of elder statesman, and count on the fact that foreign audiences won’t know—or won’t care—about what you’ve really done.

The symbolism is grotesque. While Maltese citizens wait to see if justice will finally catch up with the man who so brazenly hollowed out their institutions, Muscat spins parables about “youth empowerment” and “lifelong learning” for an audience while magisterial inquiries are tying him to a web of favours, including money laundering, fraud, and selective deals that were not done in the public interest.

So, while Muscat basks in borrowed legitimacy on foreign soil, he cannot outrun the facts. He is not a misunderstood reformer. He is not a fallen hero. He is a man whose name has become a byword for betrayal in Malta.

And whatever speeches he delivers in India, no matter how slick the video reel or how enthusiastic the applause, it won’t change the truth back home.