Watch: Naked tourist should have gone to jail – MHRA boss

A tourist who was fined for riding a motorbike naked in Pietà should have been jailed, the head of Malta’s hotel association said yesterday.

On Wednesday, a court fined a 26-year-old German tourist €1,200 after footage emerged of the man wearing a helmet but nothing else.

Reacting to the news the next morning, MHRA head Tony Zahra said the penalty should have been far worse.

“The guy on the scooter should have been put in jail, not given a fine,” Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association president Zahra said in a speech to tourism industry leaders.

“The institutions need to step up,” he added.

Asked on the sidelines of a tourism conference to explain further, Zahra said, that it is “unacceptable for someone to be naked on a scooter”.

Zahra said that there also needs to be more enforcement to tackle anti-social behaviour by tourists, particularly in towns with a large number of short-term lets.

“We are also lobbying so that the police have the power to give out on-the-spot fines. Currently, the police issue a citation... but those who are given the fine usually leave the country without paying.”

He said that only a small minority of tourists misbehave.

“The authorities need to come down on the small number of people who are behaving anti-socially... if someone leaves the house naked, they should be arrested,” the MHRA head said.

Zahra added that enforcement needs to be stepped up against the growing number of unlicensed short-term rental flats.

“If there are 8,000 short-term lets, 4,000 are not registered – that’s 50 per cent,” Zahra said. 

Zahra also alluded to a recent court sentence in which a 59-year-old Swiss man was handed a two-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to sexually harassing a cleaner.

Because the man is a politically exposed person the court upheld a request to ban the publication of his name on the grounds that it could have a negative impact on his career.

Zahra said that was unacceptable and that other countries have prosecuted PEPs and exposed their identity.

US authorities, for example, have arrested PEPs in broad daylight and taken them to court, Zahra said, referring to a 14-year-old case.

In 2011, the then-head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested in New York and was accused of attempting to rape a hotel maid.

Zahra said the Maltese authorities should act in a similar fashion when dealing with such cases.