Over the past few weeks, we have seen a number of newspaper and blogger reports about international convictions in the US, UK, Italy and Angola related to major money laundering and tax evasion cases.
The US government has also issued a warning to its citizens about using Maltese tax avoidance schemes. Our Maltese journalists seem to be able to discover many details about these criminal convictions of named persons who seem to have used Malta, among other jurisdictions, to cover up the tracks of their money laundering tax evasion and property registrations.
Of course, these noteworthy cases come to the forefront in the international press because of the amounts of money that was stashed away and because of the notoriety of the persons involved. These may have been political leaders and their families or drug dealers or Russian oligarchs.
This is bad for our national reputation and renews the risks of falling back into the grey or blacklists in the future.
However, what surprises me is the lack of curiosity and journalistic perseverance of our journalists and bloggers in Malta. Instead of regaling us with the huge amounts of billions that have entered the Maltese banking system in these tax avoidance and money laundering schemes, their journalistic curiosity ought to be concentrated in how, why and who is behind these schemes in Malta.
With a bit of research, they could follow up on the US government’s recent warning about US citizens registering property in Malta under pseudo pension schemes aimed at reducing taxes in the US. It would be quite easy to find out about these properties since all property transactions have to go through a notary and be registered in Malta.
Lawyers who set up local companies for the oligarchs, Angolan politicians or Italian mafia can also be traced since companies are registered by the local representatives of the beneficial owners
All this is certainly much more interesting to Maltese readers and future voters who must decide at the next election whether Malta should continue with these internationally repugnant tax regimes or not. If we all decide to remain tax avoidance and money laundering experts and are happy to cheat others of their tax revenues and to help drug and arms dealers to hide their ill-gotten wealth, it is up to us as a people to decide.
Why don’t the EU and the OECD clamp down on EU-based tax havens like Luxembourg, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta?- John Vassallo
Are we morally a just and good Catholic country or are we a criminal and repugnant country like Panama or the British Virgin Islands?
Naming and shaming local activists in these illegal activities that are allowed and legalised by Maltese laws would be a good start. Even something allowed by a local law could be illegal by international standards.
The finance minister recently announced that we will soon see our taxation laws reviewed to bring them in line with the general OECD action to tax all large multinational a minimum tax wherever they locate their headquarters or tax revenue companies.
Let us hope that the experts who are now working secretly with the finance ministry on the tax reform will not seek other devious routes to make money out of tax cheating or hiding illegally earned wealth.
Hopefully, the intention is to turn Malta into a healthy centre for back office services for financial companies and for fun gaming systems for internet games and not for gambling or money laundering through self-owned gambling companies like the Italian mafia did over the past 20 years.
Where is the police in all of this? Why don’t the EU and the OECD clamp down on EU-based tax havens like Luxembourg, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta? Why do we never hear of any Maltese involved as accomplices or abetters in the internationally public criminal cases our reporters so gladly inform us about?
If this does not surprise you then you should consider yourself another accomplice in their crimes. It certainly surprises me and I hope some journalist or blogger will take up the challenge and give us all some more juicy local names to ponder over as we revise our taxation system.
John Vassallo is a former Ambassador to the EU.