Malta’s whistleblower protection leaves much to be desired, expert says

The way Malta’s whistleblower infrastructure is being utilised leaves much to be desired, the executive director of Whistleblowing International Network (WIN) has said.

Anna Myers, who runs WIN from Glasgow, said that although Malta’s whistleblowing infrastructure could be improved, it is currently not being utilised to its full potential.

She was speaking to MaltaToday shortly after a workshop on whistleblowing in public procurement, organised by Repubblika as part of the events marking the 9th anniversary of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder.

Questioned about the whistleblowing law in Malta, Myers described it as a first step in encouraging people to expose wrongdoing, but insisted that employees reporting their own employers within their workplace is counterintuitive.

She further pointed to the media as a possible candidate when whistleblowers don’t trust the mechanisms in place, however she cautioned that the media must be responsible enough to focus on the message.

During the workshop, Repubblika researcher Francesca Mangion published a study on Maltese whistleblower protection in public procurement.

The study shed light on the practical reality for anyone uncovering misconduct in public procurement, which remains fraught with systemic hazards.

Mangion found that across the entire public administration, there is no published data on procurement-related disclosures, investigations, referrals, or outcomes. The whistleblower architecture was found to be further compromised by an overcrowded yet disconnected regulatory landscape.

The study noted that oversight on state expenditure and contracting integrity is divided across a myriad of entities, including the Department of Contracts, the Public Contracts Review Board, the National Audit Office, the Permanent Commission Against Corruption, the Internal Audit and Investigations Directorate, and the Malta Police Force. Rather than outright duplication of statutory mandates, the study points to functional overlap and uncoordinated interfaces at the reporting, triage, and referral stages.

The paper pointed out that Malta has no unified national referral map and no common inter-agency protocol, leaving separate ministries to rely on fragmented internal standard operating procedures.

Such deficiencies, the study shows, carries the risk of identifying whistleblowers. This is especially so when it comes to public procurement, as one’s knowledge of bids and tender details can be used to single out whistleblowers. For non-employee suppliers and contractors-turned whistleblowers, the consequences are particularly devastating, translating into commercial blacklisting, abrupt contract terminations, and severe financial losses.

While anonymous tip-offs remain legally permissible, the study shows public bodies exercise wide discretion over whether to pursue them, often relegating anonymous communications to the status of routine correspondence rather than formal whistleblowing cases.

The report stressed that relying on whistleblowers places a disproportionate personal and commercial burden on the individual, warning that whistleblowing mechanisms can never substitute proper structural controls and anti-corruption enforcement.

The study acknowledged that stakeholders interviewed during research raised the prospect of establishing a single, constitutionally entrenched whistleblowing authority to ensure true operational autonomy and restore public trust.