A day after Times of Malta revealed tentacles of suspected corruption stretching from Malta to China, and hours before a court decides whether to grant bail to former chief of staff Keith Schembri, Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo has written on Facebook about his concerns on freemasonry and its impact on a democratic society. 

The minister mentioned no names, countries or cases, but said he was concerned about how powerful people in the judiciary, politics, business, law enforcement, education, banking and other areas called themselves brothers and promised to look out for each other. 

"Today we rightly demand transparency from the government and public authorities so that we can better understand why and how decisions are taken.

"I do not think it is right in a democratic and open society such as this, to still find closed, secret groups of powerful people able to influence what happens around us.

"For, if in the same lodge, one finds freemasons taking decisions about fellow freemasons while investigating a crime, handing down a sentence, awarding public contracts, issuing a bank loan, granting a promotion...who will win, the laws under which everyone is equal or the rules of freemasonry which hand an advantage to the brothers?" the minister asked. 

Earlier in his post Bartolo also recalls how he had also raised concerns to former prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami about freemasonry 30 years ago as a journalist.

As a consequence he had received threats from one lodge, while another lodge sent representatives to explain their activities, insisting they meant no harm, he said. 

United front needed to fight criminal networks that threaten the country

Bartolo also made comments in a  similar vein in an English-language Facebook post on Monday evening.

Elections come and go, governments come and go, but certain power networks that nobody votes for, ever, remain the same even if the people who weave them change, he wrote.

"In every small country it is easy for personal and informal relationships to be stronger than institutional ones. People in strategic positions weave webs that bring together politicians, businessmen, lawyers, notaries and accountants.
All these people work together where it suits them.

"If we do not take them on seriously, by legal means, they will live on and become more powerful than government, than parliament, than the law courts, than the police."

He thanked all those in the institutions, in civil society and in the media who are taking part in this struggle. 

"It is a pity that it is not a single and united front. While the criminal webs are united, those who fight against them often do this separately and tear each other apart.  Those criminal networks are pleased that we continue to be divided and fight amongst ourselves instead of fighting them.

"I think that all those amongst us who love our country should unite in the fight against the criminal networks in our midst," he added.

"The fight is going on and it is giving results but it would be more effective and could transform our country if it were fought by a single united front. 

"Recently I said that we need to build our country on solid rock and not on soft and rumbling clay. This is the soft and crumbling clay which will destroy Malta: dishonesty and corruption, enormous greed for wealth and anything goes, as long as we become rich even through drug pushing, corruption and other dishonest work. 

"To build on the solid rock of honesty and not on soft and crumbling clay, we all need to do our bit: the parties, the business associations, the professionals, the media, the whole education system, the unions, the churches. This is why I believe in a united front of parties, business organisations, professional and civil society against criminal networks."

He warned that the country would lose its major achievements if it allowed 
hidden webs of informal and illegal power to win over the political parties and the country’s institutions.

"The shell of a sovereign state will be in the hands of elected government and the national institutions, but its soul will be in the hands of criminal networks."