‘Government official was netting up to €150,000 per month in medical visas scam’, the newspaper headline in The Malta Independent ran on August 21, 2016. Neville Gafà was that official.

The newspaper had reliable information from high-ranking Libyan officials that Gafà personally made up to €3 million since the visa scam started in 2014. The newspaper published receipts for €35,000 paid to Gafà between August and October 2015 alone. The receipts included lists of names, ID numbers and payments.

In a letter to then health minister Konrad Mizzi, Khalid Ben Nasan claimed Gafà was charging Libyans €2,500 per visa. Nasan was in possession of Viber messages exchanged with Gafà in which he tried to recoup thousands of euros Libyans paid without getting a visa.

“You took the money, I get the problem,” Nasan told Gafà. “Try to give the money back or give a solution – when I delayed your payment for one day you called 100 times,” Nasan pleaded with Gafà, “we meet in office Joseph Muscat to end the problem.”

Instead of handing the letter to the police, Mizzi simply asked the attorney general “for guidance”.

Gafà’s legal representative, former police commissioner Peter Paul Zammit,  stated that Gafà “has never received any monies in any way or manner aside from his government salary”.

Muscat’s office mounted a vicious assault on the journalist and the newspaper. “The story is a blatant lie trying to maliciously mislead its readers”, “it is simply a vicious spin (sic)”, “this is nothing short of another blatant lie by the journalist”. The hostile aggression of the OPM’s statement was indicative of the veracity of the claims.

The OPM stated that, pending investigations, Gafà “was asked not to do any work related to the matter of the allegations”. But Gafà continued to work on visas. An August 2016 memo addressed to ambulance nurses read: “Mr Neville Gafà is to be contacted 24/7 on mobile number… in ALL cases of Libyan patients transferred to MDH or when ambulances are called to assist these patients at the airport”.

Gafà remained on the Labour Party’s national executive during police investigations into the scam.

Just two days after the revelations, the police announced that investigations were concluded. “Mr Gafà was not involved in any criminal behaviour,” they declared.

The following day, the police announced they were considering arraigning Nasan, the man who exposed the scam. This was not simply an attempt by the state police to discredit the whistleblower. It was active retaliation for daring to expose the multi-million euro scam.

In July 2017, Nasan was charged with fraud and extortion. The police were determined to punish the man, sending a clear message to others. However, Nasan’s prosecution backfired catastrophically.

The court heard that, in their sham investigations into Gafà, the police only searched an office that Gafà had vacated months before. They didn’t bother to search the office he was actually using. Neither did they search his house or his computers.

Why was Joseph Muscat desperately protecting Neville Gafà?- Kevin Cassar

The police ignored footage with incrimi­nating evidence which was provided. The telephone numbers and personal details of the people linked to the footage were passed on to Assistant Police Commissioner Ian Abdilla but he took no action. Libyans wiling to travel to Malta to testify were not issued visas to do so.

On November 15, 2018, Ivan Grech Mintoff submitted recorded testimonies of 13 witnesses implicating Gafà in the scandal. Then Magistrate Franco Depasquale ordered the witnesses to provide evidence in person or via Skype.

Two days later, Gafà travelled to Libya accompanied by Muscat’s security guard, Kenneth Camilleri, on a diplomatic visa. On November 19 at 5.30pm, Gafà met representatives of the witnesses and allegedly offered them €300,000 for their silence. Camilleri denied knowledge of why Gafà was in Libya but recordings indicated he played an active role during those meetings.

Despite the mounting incriminating evidence, Muscat continued to protect Gafà. The OPM denied Gafà represented Muscat on his Libyan trip. Yet, the Libyan media identified him as Prime Minister Muscat’s special envoy.

For months, Muscat claimed he didn’t know where Gafà worked. He defended Gafà, claiming “he has been doing good work” and “he was not fired, just transferred”.

As Muscat feigned ignorance of Gafà’s role, he secretly appointed Gafà coordinator on a position of trust in his own

office. That was January 2019. It took another seven months before Gafà’s post was revealed in an answer to a parliamentary question. But not before then Minister Carmelo Abela and Principal Permanent Secretary Mario Cutajar persistently refused to answer journalists’ questions, compelling journalists to lodge FOI requests.

The OPM,the Foreign Ministry and the Health Ministry all denied Gafà’s was employed with them.

Why was Muscat desperately protecting Gafà? Why were the police mounting sham investigations into the serious allegations? Why was the whistleblower so ruthlessly persecuted? Why did the OPM attack the journalist revealing the story? Why did Robert Abela seek Gafà’s help?

A Slovak MEP, Branislav Skripek revealed that Malta sold 88,000 Schengen visas to Libyans between 2013 and 2014, jeopardising the security of the whole EU. At €2,500 each, that amounts to €220 million. Gafà couldn’t have run the scam alone. It wasn’t really Gafà the police were protecting.

On May 2, 2022, the court ruled that those 2016 newspaper revelations about Gafà “consisted of verifiable facts” and that the allegations were “substantially true”, not “blatant lies” as Muscat maintained.

The court also recommended the police investigate Gafà regarding his alleged attempts to silence witnesses.

That was weeks ago. Has the OPM apolo­gised to the journalist for harassing him publicly, calling him a liar? Has the police commissioner re-opened the original investigations into Gafà? Has Abdilla been arraigned for his inaction? Has a magisterial inquiry been launched as to how evidence of a multi-million-euro visa scam was ignored, how its frontman was protected by the prime minister and his police force and how the whistleblower faced state persecution?

That is the continuity of the culture of impunity.