The severe disability pension fraud is not the greatest waste of public funds. Compared with the 400 million spent on 3 hospitals that 10 years later are a dump, 8 million in stolen pensions drop no jaws.
Compared with what was discovered by the Panama Papers, this conspiracy does not reach great heights: we do not have hidden companies set up by ministers. Compared with the labyrinth of the Electrogas conspiracy, the pensions scheme is not that hard to untangle: you find who got the money and you make them pay it back.
But this is a scandal that violently rapes the very heart and soul of social justice. People who can work are made to pay a share of their earnings so we can support the people who cannot: in this case people whose severe health conditions would not allow them to survive without our help. A gang within government stole that money and used it to buy votes in order to remain in power. It would seem that some of them pocketed some of the money as well.
Now we’re hearing that the scandal is far more serious than that. According to one source from within the very heart of this conspiracy, the highest level of government knew what was going on and when they realised they would be exposed made every effort to cover everything up.
Roger Agius is no hero. He was a chauffeur for a government junior minister: Andy Ellul. And he was a part of the corrupt structure of favours and clientelism that squats over our country. You’d go to him to acquire something from the government that could only be available to you if he or someone like him helped you get it. Because you had no right for it to begin with.
Such as a monthly deposit in your bank account for no reason whatsoever. He’d put you in touch with Silvio Grixti, another Labour Party MP who is a doctor by profession. He’d give you an envelope containing documents certifying you had a severe condition. So severe that you’re unable to work. They’d dispatch you, documents and all, to face a board of doctors and to tell them something about how sick you are.
Then you go home and wait until you start getting government cheques, for no reason whatsoever. Well, not quite without reason. Someone would ask you to pay something out of your first cheque. Fair enough, no? And someone will remind you to vote Labour at the next election because Labour loves you and gives you money for nothing and makes you better off. On the other hand, those cruel Nationalists would, if elected, take your money away. Is that all? Can I vote for you twice, sir?
So, an MP and a medical doctor discards any ethical consideration required by his two professions to rob the government which employs him to purchase votes, using other people’s money, in order to stay in government. He could not do this alone. There were messengers like Roger Agius that brought the work in. There were the doctors on that board that ignored what their eyes told them and signed whatever they were told to sign. There were government officials. Roger Agius names Mark Calleja who heads Michael Falzon’s ministry and alleges Calleja pocketed money.
The same Agius says nobody was worried anything could happened to them because the minister knew what they were doing and would protect them. It appears the story went far deeper than Minister Michael Falzon.
Silvio Grixti resigned his seat in Parliament in 2021 when the police first interrogated him in connection with this investigation. But Robert Abela kept Grixti on as his consultant in Castille. That means Parliamentary Group boss Robert Abela knew Grixti quit because the police were on to him, but government boss Robert Abela kept him in office.
The scandal emerged because of journalists’ investigations, first among them reporters from Times of Malta. It also emerged because the police started to charge beneficiaries of severe disability pensions who clearly had no disability. If it happened once you’d call it an error; ten times there’s some collusion; a hundred times and you must have a corrupt system that has captured the infrastructure of the state.
Eventually the police charged the system’s messengers like Roger Agius and went as far as charging Silvio Grixti.
Now Roger Agius is talking. He’s saying the police are not allowing him to cooperate and reveal all about the scam. The first reaction to a squealing thief in handcuffs is to assume they’re trying to dodge justice. Watch out though. Agius is effectively confirming he did what he’s accused of having done. He’s not trying to dodge anything. He is, however, saying he can’t bear to see messengers like him get all the blame while the real culprits get away with it.
He’s gone on Andrew Azzopardi’s radio show and said a lot of things.
He said he’d been asking for whistleblower protection for months and they ignored him. This is perfectly credible. We’ve had a whistleblower protection law for 10 years but they only used it to persecute Giovanna Debono’s husband. Since then, they slammed the door in the face of anyone who wanted to expose corruption: Maria Efimova, Jonathan Ferris, and now Roger Agius.
He identified by name a senior official in Michael Falzon’s ministry and accused him of taking bribes. Nothing happened. He said that information he gave the police to help them in their investigation was delivered on the same the day he spoke to the police in confidence, to the ministers he accused of being involved.
He said that an official from the prime minister’s office told him all would be forgotten if only he fired his attorney. Because his attorney is Jason Azzopardi and the government is perfectly comfortable using their power over the police to choose your defence lawyers for you.
Corruption can happen. You can have thieving officials. You can get conspiracies of people who think they are above the law. All that can happen to any government. Labour didn’t invent this stuff. Rackets are a side effect of government. Though a racket in disability pensions is a piece of unprecedently disgusting villainy utterly bereft of conscience.
No doubt a racket of boating licenses is a bad thing. But forging doctors’ signatures, compromise doctors to confirm inexistent conditions, and steal money put aside for the severely disabled is an unconscionable cruelty unlike anything we’ve seen before. Still, no government is implicitly guilty of its employees’ ability to cheat, lie, and steal.
The real test for a government is what they would do when they find out. If they weren’t able to prevent the fraud, what did they do when they discovered it?
This is where this scandal takes an altogether different order of magnitude. The theft is serious. But the cover up of the theft is far worse than the theft itself.
Let’s not leap to conclusions merely on the back of allegations made by one of the accused, credible as they may be. Let us instead ask questions:
When did Michael Falzon find out there had been a heist of public funds reserved for severe disability pensions? When did Robert Abela find out?
Is it true that the police discussed this case with ministers? Why? Is it true that instructions were handed to the police on who to charge and who not to?
Is it true that the police delivered information from the investigation to people indicated for being involved in the theft of severe disability pensions?
Is it true that government officials threatened a person charged with crimes and offered them an incentive should they fire the lawyer who was representing them?
These questions have answers. They are questions that need answering because they speak to the very roots of our democratic life. Do we have a government that claims they are taxing us to help the disabled but are wilfully and consciously stealing from us to use our money to buy votes and their permanence in power? Are we stuck with police officers who help ministers involved in theft avoid consequences?
And perhaps more seriously than any of this. Do we have a government that is prepared to hide from us what they’re doing and lie to us to cover their tracks?
The police and the ministers cannot be the ones to investigate these questions because we suspect they know the answers and they are already hiding them. There is a need for an independent inquiry conducted in public because now that we know they stole from us, the first right we have is to expect to learn the truth.