Regulatory bodies have the force of law behind them and are declared independent and autonomous precisely so they may have both the bark and the bite. Otherwise, they would not be watchdogs.
The claims about ownership of Panama companies, bank accounts, kickbacks and even money-laundering have worried all those who have the national good at heart. Constituted bodies have not minced words, the Malta Employers’ Association even speaking of a “national crisis”.
The point we have reached is the culmination of a sequence of events that started a year ago with the Panama Papers. Legal and, possibly, criminal issues were raised, notwithstanding the Prime Minister’s and all his men’s best efforts to quell the controversy.
Amid all this, two institutions stand out like a sore thumb: the police and the Malta Financial Services Authority.
The Criminal Code says the police have the duty to prevent, detect and investigate offences, collect evidence and bring offenders, “whether principals or accomplices”, before the judicial authorities. With regard to Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the police keep insisting no proof of any wrongdoing existed to justify criminal action, notwithstanding the many leaked documents.
A magisterial inquiry and police investigations into allegations linking the Prime Minister’s wife to secret Panama company Egrant – claims which both the Prime Minister and Ms Muscat deny – only kicked in when the Prime Minister asked his legal advisers to speak to the Police Commissioner to inform the duty magistrate.
Incredulously, the MFSA has practically been completely out of the picture. Here too the law is clear about what the regulator’s function is: “To investigate allegations of practices and activities detrimental to consumers of financial services and generally to keep under review trading practices relating to the provision of financial services and to identify, and take measures to suppress and prevent, any practices which may be unfair, harmful or otherwise detrimental to consumers of financial services.”
The president of the Malta Institute of Accountants, Franco Azzopardi spoke on behalf of all law-abiding people when he asked publicly: “Where are the regulators, law enforcers and the judicial system that are also part of our fabric of confidence to investors?”
The Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit appears to have carried out its duties and recommended further action when it smelt a rat. Regrettably, nothing happened even if sitting on its board of governors are representatives of the MFSA, the police and the Attorney General’s Office, among others. Was it a coincidence that the police commissioner who had received an FIAU report left office the day after never to return? Was it a coincidence that an FIAU director stepped down at the height of the controversy but even before the Egrant ownership and kickbacks allegations became publicly known?
If their resignations were connected to the issue, what made them leave rather than see their work reaching its logical conclusion?
Perhaps it is time to consider a legal provision that would make it incumbent upon the relevant authority/body to go public when a recommendation for the police to further investigate allegations of serious wrongdoing by elements of the government remains unheeded, say, after three months and no reasonable public explanation is given.
Accountability should have no limits.