As explained already in previous posts, organsied crime in Malta is a very small industry, yet highly profitable industry with its members mostly knowing each other. The criminal and illegal industry of smuggling, drugs, and also contract killings is a very high risk because you can be put in jail, so its participants change often and rotate from one activity to another frequently. Although there are those who are lucky enough to spend a lifetime in crime, build riches and get away with it, these are usually the minority. Most of them end up dead, in jail, or broke after bad economic decisions or losing money to another criminal, etc…
Throughout history, Malta has been a smuggler’s paradise because, at times, several historical factors made smuggling easy and favourable as an economic activity even as of very recently. For example, during the last Libyan civil war, the smuggling of Libyan contraband oil boomed attracting ships from locations all over the Mediterranean. Malta, however, had one of the biggest shares if not the biggest share of all Libyan oil smuggled.
One of Malta’s most remarkable histories of smuggling was during the early 19th century during Napoleon’s war against Britain when Europe was under the Continental Blockade and no British imports were allowed. At that time, Malta boomed as a smuggling post and there was so much trade in this sector that as a result the first local banks were created.
In between Africa and Southern Europe Malta, roughly in the centre of the Mediterranean between East and West, Malta has always been in the middle of many sea routes, and part of its entrepot trade has also been smuggling. Even today, Malta is used as a stop-over for many ships smuggling drugs, weapons, cigarettes, and fake goods. It is incredibly difficult, and as of today, nearly impossible to completely abolish smuggling.
Smuggling takes place by mules who travel through airports with drugs or other products and via shipping, either by direct import and export or through a container. Freeports take in thousands of containers every day and it is impossible to check every single one of them. Custom officials usually scan a sample while the police would try to preempt the arrival of illegal cargo and honing in on particular cases they find suspicious. Someone who runs a large smuggling operation would send products in various containers and having one container caught would not impede the overall financial health of the illegal operation. This is why smuggling as a business is very difficult to abolish. Given the profits in the business are very high, despite the high risks, there will always be those who are desperate or totally stupid enough to attempt such daring feats.
We have been recently graced with the news of various successful criminals who made money by importing drugs in Malta such as Christian Borg and Mohammed Lilu, but there are many others, and what I am mostly interested in is those who have political links. In many cases, where smuggling becomes a big business, it becomes so with some help from official bodies that may close an eye on illegal activity or even be a participant in it. For example, Maltese oil smugglers bribed people in customs and Transport Malta in order to certify fake documents of the provenance of their oil.
Jobs at the freeport and the airport and the customs department attract many criminals because they provide direct access to the infrastructure where smuggling takes place. On a higher level, bureaucrats and even politicians may want access to such infrastructure for their own smuggling operations. In Malta, we had a particular case and this was Mario Azzopardi, Chief of staff and previous Economy Minister, Chris Cardona, who was also responsible for the Freeport. Mario Azzopardi ensured to have his own men operating at the Freeport to run a multi-million Euro smuggling operation business of fake goods, drugs, and cigarettes from the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and even Russia. His operation is still ongoing today and Mario Azzopardi has laundered millions of US Dollars in foreign bank accounts with his operations.
Quite ingenious I would say to become the Chief of Staff of the Economy Minister to have access to the Freeport and run a smuggling operation. Daphne had also reported that Mario Azzopardi was the cousin of Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar.
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