Pope Francis’s speech to Maltese “dignitaries” earlier this year was famously censored by the national broadcaster who ignored the pontiff’s pointed remarks about the moral duty to fight corruption. May your commitment to eliminate illegality and corruption be strong, like the north wind that sweeps the coasts of this country. May you always [...]

An analysis by international NGO Global Witness and seen by UK newspaper The Independent, shows that shipowners flying EU flags of Malta, Cyprus and Greece, are making more money carrying Russian crude oil since the EU started its attempt to punish Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine. The exceptions negotiated so far by Europe’s [...]

Read this story on The Shift News. The website is reporting that Christian Borg who has been charged with kidnapping and is being investigated for using his car dealership as a money laundering racket has filed the cheapest offer for a tender issued by the government for leased cars for the personal use of judges, [...]

Inveterate tree-chopping Ian Borg posted on his Facebook wall his meeting with possibly the worst democratically elected head of state in the world right now, Jair Bolsonaro. There were a lot of quips about how Ian Borg must have flaunted his tree-destroying record with Bolsonaro who has made it easier for loggers to eat into [...]

From my article in the The Sunday Times today: "Political elites have a stake in convincing themselves and everyone else that the situation has improved and this is no longer a den of thieves but a modern country. Their motivation is perhaps the most obvious. Towards the end of 2019, Malta’s political class came close to [...]

Working conditions in the Rabat, Gozo court building are notoriously uncomfortable. Lawyers working there have gone on strike over cramped and humid conditions in an old building inside the Ċitadella wholly unsuitable for the purpose it serves. The centuries old building has not been modernised and only a major infrastructural overhaul that would require the [...]

One of the two unions representing police officers has warned it will not accept the findings of any inquiry into how Iosif Galea was allowed to travel while a European Arrest Warrant against him was in place, unless that inquiry was properly independent. The union said the matter would likely have an impact on some [...]

Victoria Buttigieg has security of tenure protected by the Constitution. This means that except for very exceptional reasons and on the back of cross-party Parliamentary consensus, no one can ever fire her. This is meant to ensure she acts independently of pressures from people who would otherwise be able to threaten her income or her [...]

This is not a website where you come for happy reading. It’s almost always dark, critical, sometimes even flirting with being cynical. So, here’s an exception. Yesterday the government produced a candidate to run the Planning Authority, a den of iniquity if ever there was one. He was grilled by Opposition MPs Karol Aquilina and [...]

I will start this appraisal of the accounts of the Dizz Group by referring to an article I wrote for this blog in November 2020 regarding the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2019. In that post I explained how the value of two adjoining sites in Mrieħel’s ‘The Hub’ shot up [...]

In a statement issued this morning the Malta Police Union called for Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg to resign after the botched plea deal with Darren Debono, known as it-Topo, who had two charges for attempting to kill police officers withdrawn in exchange of evidence he did not give. Darren Debono is currently appealing a 10-year [...]

The police have told Times of Malta that the “investigation” into how Iosif Galea was allowed to travel out of Malta with Joseph Muscat despite a German arrest warrant they knew about for months would be “independent” and headed by a “retired judge”. That looks good. It’s meant to. It’s meant to rebuff the suggestion [...]

Angelo Gafà’s gong from the French and Alexandra Mamo’s medal, ostensibly for bravery, from the Americans, must have some reason in someone’s book but it’s nothing anyone out here can see. Some other republic should give a medal to Victoria Buttigieg so we can complete a set of mysteriously decorated inadequates. We keep getting stories [...]

I want to say something about the case against Mark Camilleri for allegedly harassing Rosianne Cutajar. Mark Camilleri in this case is not merely facing a libel suit, not technically anyway. He is also facing prosecution by the police on the back of a complaint filed against him by Rosianne Cutajar. This is not just [...]

Iosif Galea has been arrested in Italy while on holiday with, among others, former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, on the back of a European arrest warrant issued against him by German police. Despite calls from the Opposition and other quarters, the Maltese police have not yet explained why they had not acted on Germany’s arrest [...]

I delivered this speech yesterday at the annual Medi conference organised by the Sant'Egidio community in Livorno Italy under the heading "Cities have a soul: The Mediterranean, a sea moved by history." The speech was in Italian. Scroll down for an English translation if you prefer. L’ultima volta che sono stato qui tra voi è stato [...]

For those of us of a certain age, who grew up watching Italian television, the Capaci and subsequently the via D’Amelio bombings in 1992 that killed anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino loomed large in our psyche. They were events that shook us and glued us to our television sets long before the emergence [...]

A delegation of the European Parliament’s committee responsible for the justice sector tried to meet the new Maltese justice minister Jonathan Attard during their visit to Malta earlier this week and though they finally managed to see him they didn’t hear him utter a word. Sources told this website the delegation of MEPs that included [...]

With a number of other journalists, I was invited by the MEPs from the LIBE committee who were here earlier this week to tell them what I thought about the progress Malta was making in aligning itself with democratic norms, particularly the rule of law. Their final question to us was what we thought they [...]

Charlie Hebdo's Laure Daussy writes this report about safety for journalists in Malta just shy of five years since Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed. As is the style of the magazine the piece is accompanied by cartoons with a fascinating take on something that is as close to them as it is to us. At [...]