Police’s deafening silence on money laundering reports scandalous – Chris Said

Chris Said, one of the two main left in the Nationalist Party leadership race, has hit out at the Police Force over what he claimed was its in action in the face of two reports published internationally this week that he said had painted an ugly picture of Malta as a country used for money laundering and “other illegal activities”.

In a statement this afternoon, Said said that one report - issued by Europol’s Financial Intelligence Group - showed that the Italian mafia had used Malta to launder up to €2 billion through Malta.

“Another report said Malta had facilitated the transfer of more than half a million US dollars, where up to ten payments were made to suspicious companies,” read the statement by the Gozitan MP, adding that this followed revelations that the government of Azerbaijan had “bought European politicians”.

Said insisted that the two reports were very bad for the country and stressed that the silence on the part of the country’s institutions, “not least on the part of the police was deafening”.

“These two reports should have lit up the country and led to far-reaching investigations,” he said.

According to Said, the news was not noteworthy in “the Malta of Muscat’s Labour”.

“Corruption and money laundering are not only illegal activities, but corruption also means that the elderly person whose pension is already not enough to see them through to the end of the month, is chipped away at further,” he said.

Said pledged that as PN leader he would work hard to fight “this scandalous attitude in the face of that which is wrong and corrupt”.

“It is for this reason that I insisted that if we want to win people’s faith we can’t get into bed with Labour,” he added.

Emphasising that that which “is wrong is wrong”, Said stressed that he would not sit idle in the face of what is negative in the government of “Muscat and Chris Cardona”.