We are all to blame John Vassallo

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What was obvious to many of us years ago has finally happened. It is not surprising that we have been graylisted by the FATF. We’ve been deadly gray for a long time. I have written countless articles on the multitude of reasons Malta was becoming an outcast in the international economic sphere.

Trying to find the culprits is futile because the entire Maltese population is to blame. We have adopted a culture of cheating driven by what I once called “criminal energy,” of which we seem to have in abundance.

The majority voted twice for a party that embraced corruption and calculated fraud in other countries by depriving them of their tax revenues as a policy. It all started under the previous administration, which discovered special tax regimes that would attract corporate and individual tax evaders to our shores.

This continued with the large number of lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, entrepreneurs and homeowners specializing in helping and encouraging retirees, banks and holding companies to relocate here. to avoid paying taxes in their country and even not paying taxes at rates equivalent to what Maltese residents themselves have paid. Other EU member states and honest local people have had billions stolen from them. No wonder the EU countries now want to put an end to it.

In addition, companies in Panama and Dubai opened by a minister, chief of staff and businessmen involved in the Electrogas deal and not declared and the opening of a bank which was forcibly closed by the The EU watchdog with its president on the run in the middle of the night on a flight to nowhere were all signs that shouldn’t have been ignored.

The murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and its alleged link to the series of Electrogas scandals that plagued well-known companies like the Siemens, Gasan, Apap Bologna and Fenech groups as well as shabby companies and countries like Socar and Azerbaijan are all believed to be had to send us messages the Maltese that all was not well.

Yet we have all lived happily in the bubble that we thought we would never burst.

Money poured in, apartments were built and rented out to fictitious people who pay well, jobs in tax evasion and addictive activities like gambling were all our young people were hoping for after a three-year stint in the city. university and living during the summer months with visiting language schools for sex and young drug addicts in Europe.

Tourists have broken all records but have all the benefits been declared by tour operators, Ryanair, hoteliers? Have they disappeared into Panama and other secret accounts that the Swiss Leaks and the Panama Papers have disclosed but whose owners’ names have never been revealed to us?

Our European friends are fed up with us stealing from their pockets- John Vassallo

Yes, we as a people the police and regulators are all to blame.

The only ones who appear to have fulfilled their job description are the ambassadors from the UK, US, Germany and other EU countries in Malta. I have called them many times in my articles to let their capitals know what is really going on on the island.

How the world’s mafias have used our gullible or cooperating lawyers and accountants to launder their ill-earned earnings through Malta. How passport sales undermined the security of Europe, how violations of the rule of law were as serious here as in Hungary or Poland.

How their companies, like Siemens, Lufthansa, Playmobil, Ryanair, all the betting companies could invest here despite all the misdeeds that surrounded them.

I thought I was a shouting Cassandra in vain or a vox clamantis in deserto, but I was wrong. They did their job. They reported back home and now we have the results.

Thank you for punishing us because it may be the only way to find our way. To come back, we have to find another economic model.

Setting up a national task force to correct the 30-year flaws is quite a task. Asking the bad guys who caused the problem in the first place to find ways to clean it up is like asking an inmate committee to set the rules for thieves outside. What will happen in Malta, I can assure you, is that a group of politicians, lawyers and accountants will come together to pass laws which on the surface satisfy the FATF but simultaneously develop new plans to allow crooks, mafias, tax evaders and money launderers to come back or stay and continue to steal from the pockets of our EU partners.

Malta never says no to free wheat and this is what the EU funds and borrows that all next generation citizens in all Member States will have to pay back for the Maltese people free money to supplement our budget. But if our budget already consists mainly of skimming the wallets of our friends in the EU, taking those funds adds insult to injury.

May I suggest that the working group be made up of experts from the finance and tax departments of the countries that have voted to graylist us under an independent Maltese president, to define the changes Malta needs to make to come back? to the fold.

If that is not done, we can get off the gray list for a short while, but we will fall back to it soon and maybe stay there for a very long time. Cosmetic changes will not be enough. Our European friends are fed up with us stealing from their pockets.

John Vassallo, former Ambassador to the EU

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