So, far, Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa and Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg have served as facilitators and abettors of organised crime and political corruption by failing to take action on corrupt politicians and organised criminals despite the evidence they were presented with. There is nothing in the law that prevents them from being criminal collaborators in this way and there is nothing in the public service code that can hold them responsible even if their actions cause a national crisis.
There is one problem, however, that Victoria Buttigieg and Angelo Gafa didn’t factor in when they accepted their posts with the tacit acknowledgment that they grant impunity to organized criminals and Labour Party politicians with an extensive history of corruption. They didn’t factor in that abetting and facilitating money laundering is, in the eyes, of the law, the equivalent of executing it. If the law is applied in its literal and extensive nature, as it should be, then Victoria Buttigieg and Angelo Gafa are technically accomplices to all money laundering crimes of criminal suspects whose evidence of corrupt activity was presented to them. Having refused to take action on this evidence knowingly and willingly, these suspects continued to launder money, and therefore Angelo Gafa and Victoria Buttigieg became technically accomplices to that crime. The most clear-cut case is of the previous Attorney-General, Peter Grech who advised explicitly not to raid Nexia BT offices on money laundering and corruption investigations.
As for the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, it’s also very clear. Facilitators and abettors of money laundering are equally criminally culpable. In cases where it was made obvious to the authorities that criminal suspects had assets that they acquired with illegal proceeds and that they were making use of or trying to sell, Angelo Gafa and Victoria Buttigieg would have to answer as to why they allowed the go-ahead of this money laundering without taking any action. There are many cases of this nature, the Pilatus Bank case, corrupt proceeds received by Joseph Muscat after he resigned as Prime Minister, and the case of Christian Borg, but there are many more.
That Angelo Gafa and Victoria Buttigieg are abettors and facilitators of Malta’s organised crime is not just a political issue – it’s also a legal issue issue that can and may very well be proved in court.
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