In an unprecedented move that has rocked and effected changes to the Office of the Attorney-General and The Commissioner for Standards in Public Life, Prime Minister Robert Abela is effectively purging Prosecutors working on the cases related to investigations of the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life. Some of these cases include fraudulent declaration of assets of parliament of various MPs. The investigations were prompted by the Standards Commissioner and were investigated by the Police in collaboration with Prosecutors.
The Prime Minister has a direct and self-interest in this purge given that his declarations of assets were also subject to investigation. However, the Prime Minister is not being investigated for submitting fraudulent a declaration but the FIAU has investigated his financial transactions to his wife.
The total number of MPs who are being investigated over fraudulent declarations of assets are three. One of them is from the Opposition. However, there has been an active effort by the Office of the Prime Minister to squash these investigations. The Attorney-General has collaborated with the Prime Minister and the Minister for Justice in order to squash these investigations by providing them with a list of names of Prosecutors who are collaborating with the Police and the standards Commissioner over these investigations. One of these Prosecutors was fired from his post after refusing a job offer from a Labour criminal lawyer.
The Standards Commissioner, Joseph Azzopardi did not collaborate with the Prime Minister over this purge and was threatened with changes to the law if these investigations continued. Some Police officers have continued these investigations undeterred by political pressure.
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