This post continues from this earlier post that described an innocuous traffic incident when no one was harmed and nothing was damaged a year ago. Read that post first.

Karol Aquilina and Speaker Anġlu Farrugia thought they’d never again hear about a near-collision on Malta’s busy roads a year ago. After the 3 June of last year, the police never discussed the incident with Karol Aquilina again, never took any action, never raised the issue. Technically the police were entirely free to press charges against Karol Aquilina if they imagined there had been a traffic offence and he would have had to answer to the summons. But the matter seemed dead and buried.

Two weeks ago, dash-cam footage filmed from one of the cars hired for the diplomatic visitors that was driving behind Karol Aquilina’s car was shown on Karl Stagno Navarra’s daily TV show on the Labour Party station. No explanation was given on how the film made its way to Labour’s TV.

This is the report on what passes for news on Labour’s TV station:

 

I am not a traffic expert but my assessment is that Karol Aquilina as a driver conducted himself as one would expect. He indicated his intention to switch to the slow lane and he was sufficiently alert to react in good time when a motorcycle sought to overtake him from his left which should never have happened in any case.

It didn’t seem like a serious thing and it looked like Karl Stagno Navarra was just having a bit of fun until it became increasingly clearer that the plot against Karol Aquilina is far more sinister than a suggestion he drove dangerously.

The first layer of background to this story is the ongoing investigation on traffic policemen suspected of cheating in their over-time declarations to pocket extra payment for work they did not do.

These policemen, who are suspended right now are not taking the process against them lying down. It seems that the fact that they cheated is not in dispute. At face value that means they will be losing their jobs and will be made an example of by a government that is dying to prove to the world it’s fighting corruption. Rather than indict Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, these little boys formerly in blue are easier targets and will make up the numbers of “corruption cases brought to justice in 2020”.

The unfairness as these policemen waiting for the chop see it, is that there are worse crimes committed by the bosses who are accusing them of cheating on their overtime.

This Lovin Malta story, for example, quotes junior policemen lashing out at their bosses, more senior police officers who are now handling the files against them, who “skive” while on paid duty as senior policemen as they spend hours in classrooms sitting through university courses.

The motorcycle outriders involved in the 3 June non-incident from 2019 are the unhappy subjects of this over-time fraud investigation. From this other Lovin Malta story, we find they are alleging that a senior police officer over-ruled their desire to charge Karol Aquilina with dangerous driving because that senior police officer is corrupt. He did a favour to Karol Aquilina by having his junior officers close an eye on a traffic offence.

This allegation is what Karl Stagno Navarra is chasing. He pushed it out on a Facebook post.

And Karol Aquilina proceeded to categorically deny it.

 

Karol Aquilina says he’s being blackmailed. More on that in the next post.