Not enough being done in fight against corruption – Muscat

Labour leader Joseph Muscat said yesterday that Transport Minister Austin Gatt should shoulder political responsibility for the roads bribery matter.

Dr Gatt retorted that the system to root out fraudsters was working.

“The fact that action is being taken is not enough,” Dr Muscat said, adding that this was another case in a series related to corruption and bribery within Transport Malta.

There was clearly something wrong with the system of checks and balances, he said, adding that Transport Malta was the dominium of GonziPN.

Asked why Dr Gatt should assume responsibility for wrongdoing so far down the line in the ministry, Dr Muscat said this had not yet been established but ministers had not even shouldered responsibility for cases that fell directly under their responsibility. He mentioned the case of Finance Minister Tonio Fenech’s former private secretary, Noel Borg Hedley, who was found guilty of bribery.

Dr Gatt’s ministry pointed out that the fact that a Transport Malta employee was arrested, arraigned and accused of fraud clearly showed that the government did not tole-rate abuse.

A Transport Malta architect, a company director, his accounts clerk and the owner of a scrap metal company were arraigned in connection with the case.

The ministry said the arraignments - which were about fraud and not corruption as the Labour leader claimed - showed that there were effective processes in place to uncover abuse.

“As long as Dr Muscat was not promising that criminals and those who abused from any system disappeared, the most that could be done by any Administration was to ensure that there were systems to detect abuse and to ensure that justice was done. This was the political test in such cases,” the ministry said.

Meanwhile, the Nationalist Party reacted to Dr Muscat’s comments saying the government had strengthened police efforts to fight corruption and crime and it believed that all those who broke the law should face legal action.

Labour, it said, had accepted within its ranks a number of people who had been taken to court and accused of corruption or other crimes.