The Central Visa Unit underwent a “substantial shake-up” earlier this year amid concerns over the issuing of an inordinate number of medical visas and links to the consulate in Libya.
“The unit was operating with a lack of accountability. The number of medical visas issued, particularly those for Libyans, was of concern to the government,” a senior government source told The Sunday Times of Malta.
The issuing of medical visas was thrust into the national spotlight last month after this newspaper obtained a leaked copy of a whistleblower’s document alleging a Health Ministry official had been charging Libyans thousands of euros to get into the country.
The official, Neville Gafa, who is being investigated by the police, allegedly pocketed some €38,000 and went on to purchase a BMW with the money, according to the letter sent to then health minister Konrad Mizzi back in April.
The high-ranking source said, however, that concerns over operations at the CVU went back to last January, four months before the matter was flagged by the whistleblower.
We looked at the situation and said, ‘Do we want to trust the door to Maltain this person’s hands?’
It was also in January that Identity Malta, the agency dealing with matters related to residence permits, passports, citizenship and ID cards, was transferred from the Home Affairs to the Justice Ministry, in what the government said then was a “re-engineering” of the department.
The source said the unit had been operating autonomous of Identity Malta but has since been taken over by the agency.
Before that, the unit did not have a fixed head and was instead run by a “junior” acting head who had previously been posted at the Maltese consular office in Tripoli. The official worked at the consulate at the same time that allegations of a similar racket were investigated in Libya.
Last year, officials flew to the Libyan capital to investigate alleged visa fraud worth millions of euros.
The government source said that concerns over the former CVU head were not limited to a previous posting in Tripoli but included familiarity with several Libyans which “did not seem right”.
“We looked at the situation and said, ‘Do we want to trust the door to Malta in this person’s hands?’ ” the source said.
A few weeks after the whistleblower document was sent tothe government in April, the former acting head resigned from the CVU. The unit was then taken over by former police officer Sandro Magro and placed under Identity Malta.
A look at the number of visas issued before and after the changes to the unit raises questions over the way it had been run.
More than 600 medical visas allowing Libyan citizens to come for treatment in Malta were issued in the first half of 2015, a far cry from the 252 issued in 2011, at the peak of the Libyan conflict.
Then, following the changes to the CVU, the number of medical visas given to Libyans plummeted to just 46 in the past eight months.
“While we previously had high numbers of visas issued, this has since come down to a slow drip. Just a few here and there are being issued today.”
Meanwhile, police sources said that investigations into Mr Gafa were picking up steam. Officers searched his former office at the Health Ministry after this newspaper broke the alleged scam.
The sources said that investigators were collaborating with a number of Libyan nationals, including the whistleblower himself.
Mr Gafa has not been suspended pending the police investigation but is no longer based at the Health Ministry building in Valletta, having been moved to an office at St Luke’s Hospital.