BBC Radio 4 spoke this morning to Jonathan Benton who advised the British Prime Minister on corruption and headed the International Corruption Unit of the National Crime Agency about what he thought of Malta.
In summary he says that “Malta has a serious problem of money laundering. You cannot have this scale of money laundering without corruption in politics. There cannot be confidence in the judicial process, the independence of judges and the rule of law. It is surprising this is an EU member state. Billions in illicit money were laundered in Malta during the Arab spring. The passport scheme of Malta is part and parcel of the big corruption structure of Malta.
“The FBI should be sent in to Malta to investigate corruption, not just the bomb scene. The UK Government should examine what is coming from Malta. We need to do something about it”.
Scroll to 1:33:52 on the recording on this link.
Were this not the week Daphne Caruana Galizia died for telling us all this, I would say this is the most unpleasant couple of minutes of radio you will have heard in a long time.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is what the world thinks of us. This is not a sensationalist pressman. This is not a traitor in our midst as your average Labour troll would describe someone like me for writing in English about Malta and say more than the standard issue tourism office brochure.
We are on a plane nose-diving into a cliff-side.