I am sure that you have all had one occasion when, through no fault of yours, you felt the world was crumbling around you and you had no control over it. You feel betrayed and lost. It is a place you don’t want to be in. Above all, it makes you really angry. This is exactly the place where all my fellow financial services practitioners and I find ourselves in right now.
For the past 23-odd years we have been working tirelessly to build a well-regulated, competent and innovative financial services centre. We invested heavily in the highest regulatory and anti-money laundering standards, knowing that the first and most important calling cards for tiny Malta were our reputation, trust, honesty and integrity.
We told clients with conviction that they could count on us, on our regulator and on the many fine officials at the Malta Financial Services Authority, if readers permit me, epitomised by the late Cristina Parlato Trigona, perhaps the finest example of honesty, integrity and fairness I have come across at the MFSA. We believed in the independence of our law enforcement institutions, so crucial to the stability of any financial services jurisdiction.
We did it enthusiastically and we are immensely proud to have been pioneers and to have helped create and grow an industry that employs thousands and thousands of people, that offers a very high standard of living to many families and that also indirectly employs thousands more in many supply businesses.
We invented new products, reacted swiftly to market conditions and never stopped learning. We literally toured the world speaking about Malta, explaining our regulatory system, exploring solutions and explaining that they could trust us. It was tough, but we did it, because we believed and preached the honesty, integrity and reputation of our system and our country.
That was then, and we all believed that it would go on. We had to believe. How incredibly wrong we were! I recall the first moment when alarm bells started ringing. Parliament changed the regulations on the declaration of assets by parliamentarians, removing the requirement for spouses to be included. I remember thinking about it and being highly suspicious, for what was promised was a transparent government. Always trust your instincts, they say!
The Prime Minister is brazenly leading the biggest and most devious cover-up in our nation’s political history
The rest is history, history that is now being written in a highly damaging and embarrassing manner all over the world. A simply shocking level of abuse, corruption, money laundering, institutional inertia and complicity has engulfed the highest levels of government. The Prime Minister, supposedly our flag bearer of integrity who promised transparency, good governance and zero tolerance to corruption, is instead brazenly leading the biggest and most devious cover-up in our nation’s political history. To make matters worse, his Finance Minister, who presides over our industry, is also failing us miserably.
So yes, we are very angry, for it is now clear that these people have betrayed our industry and many others, as well as our country. Malta’s reputation is today in tatters and it is degenerating by the day. Many of us are facing many worried clients on a daily basis. They are questioning things with great concern and some have forewarned us that they will relocate from Malta if we don’t change course. They cannot afford to be associated with a country that is sadly being labelled as corrupt and a centre for money laundering.
Without honesty, trust, an excellent reputation and solid independent institutions and regulators, our industry and others are lost, weak and have no moral foundation to stand on. We cannot defend ourselves against unfair attacks, such as the very unfair German criticism we saw last week, precisely because we are weak and have no moral authority.
How can we have any moral authority when for a whole year the top minister and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff were caught out with undeclared tax-evading and money-laundering structures, allegedly to receive kickbacks of public money from State transactions, and they are still there?
How can we have any moral authority if the Prime Minister himself is under criminal investigation? How can we have any moral authority if instead of resigning, they seek to cover it all up, they file one ridiculous libel suit after the other and, if you please, they openly attack and insult the European Parliament?
How much more damage do they want to inflict on our industries through self-serving actions that have devastated the country’s honour, integrity and reputation and risk causing the collapse of these industries, with the consequential loss of thousands of jobs?
Have they no love and concern for their country and its people? Prime Minister, are you so callous and egoistic to use an entire country to try and save your skin, when you are critically endangering the livelihood of thousands of people?
Have you no decency and shame?
We are at the very edge of a precipice. We have to all stand back, now!
David Griscti is a leading financial services practitioner with 22 years of experience in the sector.