Malta needs Italy-style anti-mafia legislation, Repubblika tells Daphne inquiry board

Malta needs anti-mafia legislation modelled on foreign jurisdictions, the public inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia has been told.

Rule of law NGO Repubblika presented its written submissions and recommendations to the inquiry board this morning.

In the 49-page document, the group attempts to address the inquiry’s substantive terms of reference. This includes showing how Joseph Muscat and people within his circle enjoyed impunity and had dehumanised the journalist, frustrating her right to privacy, family and property.

Were Italian law to be applied to the case of Caruana Galizia’s murder, it would be branded a terrorist act “di stampo mafioso” argued the NGO. “We use the term ‘mafia’ advisedly. Even in countries with decades of experience of fighting the mafia by whichever name it would be calling itself in their context, the authorities are slow to recognise the threat of organised crime…It is easier to see episodes of crime as isolated incidents rather than as manifestations of an invisible but giant entity that uses crime to pursue complex interests.”

“The evidence heard before the inquiry, as well as investigations by local and international journalists, had convincingly demonstrated that there exists in Malta a crime syndicate that brings together people in business, politics and crime that broker arrangements, transact and agree public and private contracts using bribery and coercion,” Repubblika said.

Malta had suffered extensive mafia infiltration because of the vulnerable nature of porous economic activities such as financial services and online gambling, said Repubblika, making Malta a dangerous place for people resisting organised crime.

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Mafia membership should be a crime

The NGO suggested membership of such an organisation be in and of itself a punishable offence, even if a mafioso cannot be directly linked to the execution of any crime committed on the organisation’s behalf. The absence of such a legal option risks allowing people who should be held responsible for Caruana Galizia’s murder to get away without giving account, it said.

“This murder cannot be separated from the corrupt public procurement, the money laundering, the bribery and the voting manipulation that Daphne was killed for exposing… It is not just people who are proven to have been directly involved in Daphne’s murder who should suffer consequences, but… all those whose illicit profits and electoral clout were protected as a result of her elimination [too].”

Repubblika said the Maltese police had not always cooperated fully with their international counterparts. It noted how the Italian press reported that for years prior to his arrest in Malta, Italian police sought to notify Yorgen Fenech of an investigation into match-fixing he is believed to have been part of.

"All notifications, however, were not served because the Maltese police would return correspondence addressed to Yorgen Fenech as his address was ‘not known’. Malta licences more than 25 international banks processing billions of euro. It issues thousands of passports to third-country nationals that do not live and barely visit the country. It hosts a large portion of Europe’s gaming industry. The potential victims of crimes using these tools are often outside of Malta,” Repubblika said, arguing for a federalised criminal justice system across the EU.

EU must adopt federal criminal justice system

It said that cross-border crime should be defined as federal, empowering federal police to investigate, if necessary without reference to local authorities and charged in front of federal courts.

The unexplained wealth of “unemployed” Alfred Degiorgio, one of the alleged triggermen in the murder should also be investigated, argued Repubblika. Malta had considered implementing similar legislation to the UK’s system of so-called “unexplained wealth orders” but had then decided to discard or postpone it indefinitely.

The organisation recommended that it should also be a specific offence for a person in public office to seek to obstruct the police, prosecutors, investigators or other officials such as the National Auditor, the Ombudsman or the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life from carrying out inquiries.

“As in several other jurisdictions, we think it should be a criminal offence for a public official to conduct official business using private means of communication, such as using private email accounts or private messaging tools,” Repubblika said.