There’s a very interesting aspect about the story of Roderick Galdes and the saga of his extended corruption. Roderick Galdes has been accumulating an unusual amount of properties ever since he was a cabinet Minister but this accumulation increased ever since he was appointed Social Housing Minister in 2017. He was re-appointed in this post by Prime Minister Robert Abela in 2020.
In July 2023, the Minister for Finances and the Prime Minister came to blows. Just some days later, Malita Investments was transferred from the Ministry of Finance to the Social Housing Ministry under Minister Roderick Galdes.
Was this incidental or coincidental? We can’t tell for sure, but the timeline does look suspicious. However, it’s good to provide some context.
I have some experience working for the Maltese government so I know how the bureaucratic machine works. The second most powerful person in the cabinet is not the Deputy-Prime Minister because being Deputy-Prime Minister gives you no executive powers. The role of the Duty-Prime Minister is mainly to support the Prime Minister and fill in for him when he is absent.
The second most powerful person in the cabinet is the Minister for Finances because he (or she, although we never had a woman as a Minister for Finances) has very extensive executive power by holding the keys and the controls of the public purse. Government bureaucrats know very well what I am talking about. As a government executive, the Minister for Finance can make or break you and he can even do so at his discretion without the Prime Minister’s support.
The extensive power carried by the Minister for Finance gives him the privilege of having easy and unencumbered access to the most important business and financial players in the country. And guess what? Everyone wants a piece of him and everyone wants his support. And many important people will share secrets and intelligence with him with the hope of obtaining his favour.
So I find it highly unlikely that Minister Clyde Caruana was unaware of the corruption by Minister Galdes and there is also a very high probability he confronted the rime Minister with this issue. We can confirm that the Minister for Finance has been a strong critic of government excess and corruption in closed doors.
There is also a very high probability that other Ministers were very much aware what Minister Galdes what was doing because press reports about his activities (especially by The Maltese Herald) noted his corruption as back as 2023.
To conclude, the Prime Minister seems to have been protecting and covering-up for Roderick Galdes despite being aware that he was corrupt.
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