Recently, Tax Commissioner Joseph Caruana announced that a new system based on artificial intelligence (AI) is about to be introduced to Malta to strengthen and support the intelligence of the existing staff of the Tax Department of the Ministry of Finance.

It is likely that some members of the staff of that ministry must be quite offended to hear that their own intelligence did not suffice to collect all taxes due and that tax avoidance and tax evasion had not been tracked sufficiently.

The new system will be able to use all existing data of one’s personal wealth both in Malta and abroad as well as all bank accounts, properties, boats, cars and other items of personal and family members’ wealth to compare this with the declared income to the tax authorities over past years.

AI has the advantage of being objective since it supposedly has no feelings, no family ties or affections and cannot take bribes to look away from clear evidence of cheating and false declarations.

This is wonderful news and I hope that this system will affect all taxpayers, both Maltese and foreign, who declare Malta to be their primary residence and tax residence.

I welcome the advent of IT being used for law enforcement.

However, my doubts are best described by a true short story of what once already happened in Malta when new technologies were attempted to be applied for law enforcement and security purposes.

This story took place in 2005 when the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) was held in Malta for the first time.

We all remember that event when roads leading to Girgenti were asphalted and rubble walls cleaned and repaired, since the queen and other heads of state were to be driven there and things were made to look good in a Potemkin sort of way.

During that time, I was the head of the General Electric’s European Affairs Office in Europe, headquartered in Brussels. GE had just installed the Delimara power station and had been involved in helping the Maltese Drydocks with tenders to build and export structures for power stations across the world.

GE was also interested in partnering with the government of the day in every way possible.

When CHOGM was announced, GE had just launched its most advanced airport and security detection machinery. This was a machine through which people in general entering a secure building would have to pass.

This new machinery would puff some air and sensitive fumes towards the person passing through it and it would automatically detect whether the person was carrying metal objects like knives and guns.

It would even sense whether the person would have handled a gun or fired a gun within the last five days.

High taxpayers should be proud to be supporting the national economy and have nothing to hide- John Vassallo

It would detect traces of drugs on the clothing, money carried within the person whether in a wallet or loosely that would have been handled by drug dealers or users or by persons who would have fired a gun recently.

With this information, which was shared with the authorities in charge of security of the visiting prime ministers, presidents and royalty coming to CHOGM, there was an interest to have a number of these machines installed at the most important locations of the summit at no charge to the Maltese government.

And so it was and personnel were trained ahead of the event.

When the event started and after only a few hours after the arrival of a number of delegations as well as local and foreign press and staff of the visiting dignitaries, I received a call from the deputy head of the police asking me to inform GE urgently that Malta wanted these machines to either be turned off or, if possible, to make them less sensitive in their detection.

GE answered that there was no way of selecting what the machine did.

It could either detect all the infringements or none at all if it was switched off.

A decision was therefore taken to switch the machines off and to let all persons to pass through the machines that only stood there like useless gadgets. The appearance looked good.  What went through them into the CHOGM meeting rooms God only knows.

The moral of this story is the following, Mr Commissioner for Revenue.

Your new machine to check for tax evasion and discrepancies between personal wealth and declared income will certainly catch many thousands of cases of tax avoidance and tax evasion and many of these caught will also be among the political classes as well as among the professional and building industry oligarchs and foreign investors and their staff.

The AI machines will be like the GE puffing machines, heartless and not bribe able; they will detect everything and everybody.

How soon will it be that you will receive an order to stop using the system or, even worse, to use it selectively by suing normal citizens while letting the big fish off the hook?

If you install such a system, may I also ask you to try to suggest to the government to pass a law whereby all tax returns and tax avoidance cases are public with the names and amounts made public and not secretive as they are today.

High taxpayers should be proud to be supporting the national economy and have nothing to hide.

John Vassallo is a former ambassador to the EU.