Peter Paul Zammit’s tenure as Commissioner of Police, the shortest lived ever, started off with an EU investigation backdrop. It also ended dramatically due to another EU investigation.
Just a few days after his tenure started in April 2013, having been personally appointed by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Zammit confidently declared that he was reversing his predecessor’s decision, which had been endorsed by the Attorney General, to take an EU-related €60 million bribery allegation to court.
Last Wednesday, the wheels of ironic destiny turned full circle. Olaf’s bombshell letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives revealed that the Police Commissioner of Malta, an EU member state, led by a government supposedly imbued with a European ethos, had repeatedly and intentionally, despite several reminders, failed to collaborate with Olaf in a EU-related, new high-profile investigation.
Malta’s Police Commissioner is being accused of having breached EU law by not cooperating with the new investigation, as he was duty bound to do. Indeed, article 8.3 of Regulation 883/2013, which is also part of Maltese law, obliges “the competent authorities of the member states (to) transmit to the (Olaf) Office any other document or information considered pertinent which they hold relating to the fight against fraud, corruption and any other illegal activity affecting the financial interests of the Union”.
This is the first time such an accusation is being levelled at a member state in recent history. So much for Muscat’s much-vaunted promise to make Malta the best in Europe.
On Thursday, Zammit threw in the towel. In truth, over the past year I have given a myriad of reasons why he should have resigned much earlier. Almost all were due to him succumbing to incessant, fervid political interference. Invariably, he had gone out of his way to cover up for the rancid misconduct of a high-ranking Home Affairs Ministry official. But Olaf proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
A new Acting Commissioner of Police has been appointed. Incidentally, the longest serving Acting Director of Prisons has replaced the shortest serving Commissioner of Police. The Opposition salutes Raymond Zammit and wishes him well, especially for the benefit of the Police Corps on the eve of their 200 year anniversary.
Raymond Zammit will have to address the increase in criminality. He will have to give life to the government’s promise to have Police extra duty taxed with a much lower rate, and pay all those scores of millions of euros in arrears of Police overtime which had been repeatedly promised by Muscat. He has to put a stop to all the politically motivated transfers within the corps, of which there were more than 600 last year, including those given to police officers who were lawfully acting upon citizen reports concerning abuse by high-ranking ministry officials.
Who from the government did not want the Commissioner of Police to collaborate with Olaf on a new investigation?
He cannot allow the closing down of police stations in small villages as his minister intends. Hopefully, he will not be available to take calls from anyone, mayors included, to jump the queue for the ferry, nor will he smudge the decorum of the corps by having police officers carry out duties that are not on. He cannot cow nor bow to pressure not to prosecute certain individuals or, worse still, arbitrarily withdraw criminal charges.
Hopefully we will not see him publicly denigrating, as his predecessor was obliged to do to protect a callous ministry official, one of his own inspectors for having solved a serious crime and brought the guilty party to court. We expect him to respect, in word and deed, all court decrees, and never ever to refer to any sitting magistrate as the “lowest of the lowest”.
It will be an affront to common sense and an exercise in escapism if we miss the wood for the trees in this sordid affair. Peter Paul Zammit could never have been acting out of his own volition with regard to the Olaf investigation. Anyone with a modicum of common sense can conclude that former Commissioner Zammit must have been following the instructions and direction given to him by his political masters. Giovanni Kessler’s letter leaves no doubt that Olaf too believes this.
I have no difficulty in offering Raymond Zammit full cooperation on condition that he stands his ground and does not yield to any political pressures. We therefore expect that he will forthwith give to Olaf what his predecessor was directed to decline: full, unconditional, unfettered cooperation according to EU law. Will he rise to the occasion?
This Olaf investigation is getting some people within the top echelons of government hot under the collar. Who from the government did not want the Commissioner of Police to collaborate with Olaf on a new investigation? Who from the government was ready to defy and breach EU law, inevitably drawing upon Malta harmful, international opprobrium? What was the reward for all this?
The buck stops with the Prime Minister in all of this.
jason.azzopardi@gov.mt
Jason Azzopardi is the Nationalist Party’s spokesman for home affairs and national security.