Last Sunday Times of Malta’s front page article reports on the breadth and depth with which international organised crime has been allowed to operate undisturbed, a few kilometres beyond Malta’s shores.
The alarming report points towards the possibility of criminal collusion between organised crime and elements of local police – which if proven is a sure-fire sign that our institutions may have been infiltrated with little or no difficulty.
Alternattiva Demokratika and Partit Demokratiku jointly ask whether PN and PL are enabling International Organised Crime Networks through their inaction.
Besides periodic media reports from 2018 and Press Releases, a Private Members Motion was tabled by MPs Godfrey Farrugia and Marlene Farrugia in Parliament in October 2018 for the establishment of an internationally-led body modelled on the United Nations on the International Commission Against Corruption and Impunity, focused on combating organised crime in the Central Mediterranean, to prevent illicit trade spilling into Malta.
Neither of the existing two parliamentary parties have taken action to break the international crime syndicates that operate from and around Malta. It is of utmost concern that neither PL nor PN have supported this Private Members Bill presented in Parliament, which is still to be placed on the Agenda for discussion, almost two years since it was tabled. Alternattiva Demokratika and Partit Demokratiku encourage MPs Godfrey and Marlene Farrugia to renew their calls for the Motion to be discussed and reiterate the call to the Leader of the Opposition to select the motion for Parliamentary debate without further delay.
In contrast to Malta, Italy has made arrests and seized millions of Euros in assets derived from illegal activities, whilst the writing had been on the wall for Malta’s government including parliament for some time.
In an official report commissioned by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), authored by Mark Micallef, Director of the North Africa and Sahel Observatory, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, entitled, ‘Shifting sands — Libya’s changing drug trafficking dynamics on the coastal and desert borders’, the dynamics of this organised criminality is clearly researched and detailed. The reading makes for serious cause for alarm.
AD and PD ask why both PL and PN are ignoring the elephant in the room?
Furthermore, the suspicion of direct or indirect infiltration by international organised crime into important elements of the two larger parties seems to be the only remaining explanation why the two parliamentary parties and the state authorities are conveniently looking the other way.
AD and PD call for a public enquiry as to what action has been taken so far, to expose the alleged criminal links to the police and to ask why no further concrete action has been taken.
Furthermore, the parties jointly reiterate the urgent and serious need of reform of party financing legislation based on GRECO’s recommendations, the end of impunity through transparent good governance and political and criminal accountability which need to be implemented in tandem for the country to start moving towards a state of normality.
