The culture of impunity and bribery experienced during the Joseph Muscat-Konrad Mizzi-Keith Schembri epoch continues.
With Robert Abela the drops keep filling the accounts of many in the same spirit. The Prime Minister himself has admitted receiving rental income from an invisible tenant waiting to receive a Maltese Passport to launder moneyacross the EU. Abetting others to perform an illegal act is itself illegal. Getting a Maltese passport without fulfilling the residency obligation is a crime. Receiving monthly rent for an uninhabitable villa built illegally on ODZ and bought way below the market value just days after its status as a legal building was decided upon by the PA whose legal adviser was the Prime Minister, stinks to high heaven. But all taxes and stamp duties have been paid. Yes, all money launderers must pay a price to launder their money.
Blame both the launderer and those at the Inland Revenue Department who should have sent architects to control the proper value of the villa bought but did not. Blame the Notary who knew or should have known from searches that the villa had a much higher market value than what was being contracted.
And then there is the court judgement that annulled all the Vitals hospital deals and side letters as corrupt and fraudulent. Collusion between cabinet members and staff at Castille as well as the finance ministry and the fraudulent first and second concession holders has proven the state of rot that Malta has fallen into.
Just consider the way a minister has revealed the bribes received from Yorgen Fenech to act on his behalf and to help him in his business dealings with Government. She also attacks her own colleagues for acting as swine filling their bellies from the through of the public purse and our tax money.
Apart from this, there are all the Panama Accounts and the Electrogas deal that got much larger drops to fill the jars of many others. The inquiry on the killing of Daphne exposed the culture of impunity. The police, the AG and the government just do not care. The Maltese public seems to have lost all hope of ever getting to know the real extent of this grand robbery. The hospital sales, the American University, the Ministerial trips abroad, the Azerbaijani agreements, and the Angola blood diamond queen cash laundered using Malta structures with the help of local lawyers, tax consultants and bankers are as bad. The drops continue but the owners of the jars are never satisfied. They invent new sources to squeeze more drops.
The Italian mafia laundered money under the very noses of the FIAU and MFSA or maybe even with their active collaboration. Who knows? Some notaries, lawyers and tax advisers met these gaming company owners and set up and registered the companies used by the mafia. They cannot pretend not to know or suspect their clients.
“Bil-qatra l-qatra timtela’ l-ġarra” as the Maltese qawl or proverb says. How we miss poor Daphne today because, had she been allowed to live and to blog, she would be regaling us with the Qatar Maltagate story as it unfolds. She had her sources which dried up or went elsewhere. But was that not why they murdered her in the first place? Was it not to stop others from investigating and to let the drops flow into their jugs and Daphne’s sources to dry up?
The latest lemon to squeeze seems to be Qatar, apt anagram of Qatra. Qatar is a willing lemon with lots of sour juice always interested to bribe whoever can help dispel its stench. Qatar is sick and breaks all rules of democracy, social affairs, labour laws, lobbying, and honest dealing. First, they bribe FIFA, then they build their infrastructure with slave labour disregarding all regulations. They treat their women as inferior beings and ban LGBTQ persons.
Maltese officials visited Qatar before the World Cup. Qatar paid millions to corrupt European politicians and covered the costs of many politicians from many countries including Malta. Why have you allowed yourselves to be dragged into the dirt of an absolute and cruel monarchy like Qatar? So many deaths unreported and so much money made by not paying the minimum liveable wage or providing adequate housing and feeding to these poor workers just to fill the jars of the monarch and his family and of those callous architects, building firms from Europe who built the stadia, housing estates and palaces and museums.
And why should the MLP allow this gravy train to go by without jumping aboard to pick a few crumbs?
Of course, they feel at home in that corrupt country because since Muscat began to change Malta into a similar slave labour-driven, bribery and corruption-ridden, over-built republic, Abela and his present cabinet feel just like home away from home there.
Maltese officials continue to visit, arranging all-paid invitations during the World Cup with free VIP tickets. More visits followed the sport seeking investments from people with a criminal record who even got a Maltese Passport. Qataris who spend their residency in Malta in a garage or a semi underground one-roomed flat sleeping five? How come our President now acts as a salesman for a private company accepting invitation to visit Qatar, probably also paid for by the Qataris with only one company represented on his entourage? This is unworthy of an EU Member State. Macron or Scholz would not accept bribes from the Qataris.
The only EU Leader taking the Qatari side in the Qatargate case in Belgium was our own dear or shall I say rich Robert Abela. Why such warmth towards a dictatorial monarch caught bribing European politicians? The politicians are at fault and the briber too. But no, we must pay our dues to the piper who has dropped I wonder how many pennies into the “karusi” at home.
I am disgusted as are so many others around me.
They are only socialist in name and carry badges but have no feeling in their hearts. They only feel warm when their accounts receive a few more drops.