The current parliamentary term, which is soon coming to an end, has been characterised by the great number of MPs, on both the PL and the PN side, who are allergic to the payment of taxes on time or even not paying at all, whether it is income tax, VAT or whatnot.
Of course, political tax dodgers have existed previously. Austin Gatt’s forgotten account and Michael Falzon and Ninu Zammit’s hidden accounts, all in Switzerland, come to mind.
The last part of the previous legislature saw the unmasking of the three biggest scoundrels in Maltese political history since Antonio Cardona and Gonsalvo Monroy in 1426-1427. Thanks to the investigative work of Daphne Caruana Galizia and to the ICIJ consortium of investigative journalists, we uncovered the three crooks who go by the name of Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Mr Egrant.
In order to pocket illicit gains, which went by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and, obviously, not paying any income tax on them, these three resorted to opening their secret non-declared companies in Panama and had spent all their energy to try and open secret bank accounts all over the world, where they could hide the illicit and dirty gains of their machinations.
All this was done according to a well-prepared plan, which was triggered into action just four days after the election of the Labour Party to government in 2013. Basically, having dismissed the shady world of Cardona (Antonio) and Monroy in 1427, Malta re-entered the dishonest world of Cardona (Chris) and Joseph Muscat in 2013.
The tax dodging bug started infecting other members of the Muscat government immediately afterwards. In July 2013, the whole country was regaled with the news that minister Manwel Mallia had the modest sum of €500,000 in cash stacked at home. His candid explanation was that this was because he had disposed of some property he had owned.
Of course, one has to be a veritable idiot to swallow such tripe. But, since we have a good number of citizens who are bootlicking faithful servants of authority who hardly ever use their critical and analytical faculties, we all swallowed the tripe, despite the fact that it is today illegal to deal in more than €10,000 in cash. Naturally, the real provenance of this little treasure is easily linked to undeclared earnings. Hopefully, it is not what Mark Camilleri has suggested in his book. However, the fact that Mallia has never followed up on his threat to sue Camilleri authorises us not to consign Camilleri’s hypothesis to the rubbish bin.
This ‘careless richness’ on the part of Mallia contrasts a lot with the near poverty of Gozitan minister Anton Refalo who, in his 2015 parliamentary declaration of assets, wrote down that he had only earned €7,200 in 2014 for the rental of the 16 properties he owned. Basically, the average rental of his properties was around €45 a month. I am still surprised and scandalised at noticing that no-one has yet proposed Refalo for the Ġieħ ir-Repubblika award in recognition for his boundless generosity.
Why not elect MPs who have no problems with the tax or VAT authorities?- Arnold Cassola
At this point, enter Adrian Delia, with his ‘new way’. Daphne Caruana Galizia was the first to out him, with an offshore Barclays account in his name in Jersey. According to Times of Malta reports, “some £346,000 (around half a million euros) were deposited into the Jersey account in the form of varying cash and cheques”. Then, in July 2019, Lovin Malta reported that Delia’s in-laws loaned him €100,000 to settle unpaid taxes. In September 2019, according to Times of Malta, he still owed €60,000 in unpaid taxes.
In 2020, the PN thought that by changing their leader it would rid itself of Delia’s skeletons in the cupboard. So wrong. It was MaltaToday that came up with the scoop: Bernard Grech had “received a number of warnings for failing to pay his income tax and VAT, over €60,000 in total, over two decades”. Basically, the PN found itself from the frying pan into the... boiling kettle.
At this point, the PL became jealous that the PN was vying for national leadership in the tax dodging race between the two parties. Hey presto, Rosianne Cutajar came to the rescue. In February of last year, not only did Times of Malta reveal that she “took a €9,000 cut from a €40,000 pile of cash handed to her by murder suspect Yorgen Fenech as part of a 2019 Mdina property deal” but she even failed to declare them for tax purposes.
Also, not to be undone, less than a month ago, Times of Malta revealed that Ian Castaldi Paris, the MP whom Cutajar called a “mejjet bil-ġuħ”, “has to pay some €300,000 in overdue taxes and penalties after a probe into his fiscal affairs found hundreds of thousands of euros in undeclared income”.
And now we have the David Thake case. He had to resign because he kept his tax situation hidden. Times of Malta revealed that “his company named Vanilla owes some €270,000 in unpaid VAT dues and is set to sign a repayment plan with the authorities”. A week later, MaltaToday doubled up by disclosing that Thake’s Maltashopper company “has filed no accounts for 10 years, and has a €550,000 VAT bill”.
Thake is disputing the amount mentioned by MaltaToday but has admitted that this backlog is due to his having preferred paying his employees than pay the government the VAT due on time.
Whatever the reasons, why does it have to be so complicated?
Why not elect to parliament people who have no problems with the tax or VAT authorities in the first place?