We will leave the FATF’s grey list, Robert Abela says, a stronger and more attractive jurisdiction. Who would have guessed? Of course, we’ll leave stronger. If we don’t get stronger, we don’t leave.
Does anyone expect us to be taken off the list if our anti-money laundering deficiency remains classified as ‘strategic’ by the FATF?
Or if the World Bank Group continues to rate us as medium risk for corruption?
Abela spouts banalities but they are laced with cunning language. He says “we” will get stronger and “we” will leave the grey list. But the two ‘wes’ are not the same.
It’s Malta that needs to leave the grey list. But it’s Abela’s government that needs to get stronger: better at processing and acting on financial intelligence, ready to prosecute the crooks at large.
Abela tries to come across as filling our hearts with courage. What he’s really doing is spreading the blame, away from his door.
And away from his predecessor, Joseph Muscat, who got us into this mess by letting the country’s anti-money laundering watchdogs go to seed while he himself refused to take the necessary action.
Abela says we will emerge stronger but stronger than when? Than we are in 2021? Than we were in 2016? In 2012? The moment Abela commits to a concrete comparison, one of two things will happen.
If he has the nerve to say we will be stronger than we were before 2013, he will heap ridicule on himself. The facts and experts will contradict him. Being stronger than we were in 2012 is a tall order. Having been on the grey list is itself a stain on our record. It’s a disadvantage that will dog our reputation.
If Abela says something realistic – that we will be stronger than we were during Muscat’s time – then he is effectively denouncing his predecessor. The calls to do it explicitly will only increase.
The finance minister, Clyde Caruana, has the same problem. He mouths platitudes about not crying over spilt milk and not disheartening people. But even platitudes give him away.
To cry over spilt milk is to moan pointlessly about past mistakes. Demanding recognition of Muscat’s misdeeds has to do with the future, not the past.
It’s not pointless.
We were greylisted because of political weakness in pursuing crooks. Owning up to that weakness is the first step to reacquiring credibility.
It would show the government does have the political commitment to applying our laws and pursue high-level prosecutions.
In parliament, Caruana said that working in silence behind the scenes is now more important than public confrontation. Ah, the Evarist Bartolo grand strategy.
Remember the great results for Malta, in 2016, obtained by Bartolo’s famous efforts behind the scenes? You don’t? Don’t worry, the US, the UK, Germany, Transparency International, Moneyval and FATF missed them too.
Anyway, who’s talking about public confrontation? The demand is for public consensus that it was Muscat who led us into this mess.
Robert Abela cannot rebuild Malta’s reputation without damaging Joseph Muscat’s- Ranier Fsadni
Caruana says this is not the time to dishearten people. Which people? It’s evident from the public statements that the business sector would be greatly encouraged if the government shows it knows right from wrong and is willing to call it out.
The people who would be demoralised would, of course, be Labour’s core support. They’re the loyal people who believed Muscat (and the bulk of the current government’s MPs) back in 2016, when they were told that Panamagate didn’t warrant significant action by the authorities.
They’re the ones who believed their political leaders who told them that the only threat to Malta’s reputation came from the very people warning that it was in serious jeopardy.
These Labour supporters invested their energies and identities in taking their leaders at their word. They went out demonstrating in the streets on the strength of their belief. If, now, they had to be told that Muscat was at fault after all, then, yes, they would be ‘disheartened’.
We might possibly see public confrontations but between Labour and Labour. And the consequent demoralisation would almost certainly show in abstentions during the general election that is around the corner.
Abela and Caruana talk as though they’re speaking in the national interest. But it’s Labour’s electoral interests that they’re protecting. They’re still gambling that they can somehow find a practical fudge that placates the FATF without disillusioning Labour’s base.
Here is the fundamental structural contradiction at the heart of Abela’s premiership. His success as prime minister depends on rebuilding Malta’s reputation; his success as Labour leader depends on protecting Muscat’s reputation. But he cannot do both.
He cannot rebuild Malta’s reputation without damaging Muscat’s. He cannot protect his predecessor without making international observers distrust his political commitment to take the necessary actions.
It’s possible that he hopes to win a general election and then, on the strength of victory, now his own man, to take the necessary steps. Perhaps. But that, too, is a path fraught with risk. We already know that any arrest leads to people offering to give up the masterminds.
In any case, a strategy to delay decisive high-profile prosecutions, until after a general election, will also prolong our time on the grey list.
Abela will be left spouting banalities and platitudes, hoping they don’t give too much away.
