Kevin Aquilina’s article entitled ‘A prosecutor general’ (May 23) does not do justice to the work done to strengthen the prosecution services since the Bonello Report was published in 2013.

The Bonello Report played an important role as a source of reference and inspiration with regard to many reforms carried out over the last four years, including those relating to the prosecution service.

Although the elaborate structures suggested in the report were not set up in the last four years, it is not correct to state its suggestions were ignored. Rather than going for a sudden radical change with unknown consequences, the government has opted for a gradual approach in strengthening the prosecution services based on building on what there is within the current constitutional set-up with a long track record.

The Prosecution Unit within the Office of the Attorney General has, in fact, been strengthened with consistent intakes of lawyers, the increased definition of roles, the duty to document decisions and the increase of independence of prosecutors through clear rules laid down in a published code of ethics.

Moreover, the prosecutors from the Office of the Attorney General have taken on an increased role in prosecutions before the Court of Magistrates. This role commenced through a pilot project relating to prosecutions for road traffic criminal offences and it is planned that this role should also extend to important cases before the Court of Magistrates as a court of criminal inquiry.

In this regard, it is significant that, in its very recent ‘Compliance Report’ on the Fourth Evaluation Round of March 27, 2017, in the part relating to prosecutors, the Council of Europe’s Group Against Corruption (Greco) referred to “the track record of independence of the Attorney General’s Office and the fact that it is a trusted institution among Maltese citizens”.

Greco also praised the steps taken to further define roles and responsibilities through the publication of a code of ethics for advocates and legal procurators at the Office of the Attorney General in January 2017.

Throwing all the hard work done in the past four years in this sector out of the window hardly squares with the findings of respected institutions such as Greco.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.