European parliamentarians in Malta on a fact-finding mission next week will again request meetings with the Prime Minister, his chief of staff, the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General, among others, this newspaper is informed.
The MEPs will arrive in Malta for a two-day visit on Thursday next week. The decision to send the delegation to Malta was taken by the European Parliament last month in the wake of the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia on October 16.
European Parliament sources told this paper that the delegation of MEPs from the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the Pana Committee will seek to discuss concerns about the functioning of the rule of law with the country’s highest authorities, as well as activists, NGOs and journalists.
According to the sources, the MEPs will ask to meet with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and also issue a fresh invite to his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, who repeatedly refused to appear in front of the Pana Committee while it was in Malta earlier this year.
They will discuss the rule of law with journalists, activists, NGOs
Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar, Attorney General Peter Grech and Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri will be on the list of invitees, together with Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) and Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) representatives.
The MEPs will ask to speak with former FIAU employee Jonathan Ferris, who was informed his employment with the government’s anti-money-laundering agency was being terminated during his probation period, just days after Finance Minister Edward Scicluna questioned whether a number of investigative reports into Mr Schembri and Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi had been “written to be leaked”.
Meetings with Justice Minister Owen Bonnici, as well as various activists, lawyers, journalists and representatives from both Nexia BT and Pilatus Bank, will also be requested.
All the meetings have yet to be confirmed, as invitees are to be informed of the MEPs’ requests in the coming days.
Last week, the rule of law in Malta came under fire during a debate at the European Parliament, with MEPs calling on the Commission to initiate dialogue with the Maltese government on the subject after a large majority of MEPs voted in favour of a resolution for immediate action.
Co-signed by all EP groupings bar the Socialists and Democrats group, which Labour Party MEPs are part of, the resolution outlines a series of concerns EU parliamentarians have about Malta and calls on the Commission, among other things, to investigate whether Malta is compliant with EU anti-money-laundering laws.
Earlier this month, the Pana Committee published a final report including details of the MEPs’ visit to Malta. The report said that Maltese institutions responsible for implementing and enforcing money-laundering and tax-fraud laws were “highly politicised” and the police force’s inadequate resourcing could suggest maladministration.
It also noted that Mr Schembri, named in the Panama Papers, had refused to meet the delegation, which was why the MEPs would again be requesting a meeting with him next week.