By empowering criminals and easing anti-money laundering laws, the spillover effect among the justice system is not only widespread impunity for dangerous criminals, it is effectivey empowring their status and normalising their actuivities within society. This also means that the dysfunctionality within the justice system is so severe that the system is now actively engaging in favour of suspected and convicted criminals and not in favour of the victims or on the clampdown of organised crime.
Today, a very shocking article was published in Times of Malta. The article reveals that despite the Home Affairs Minister’s denials, the government is currently discussing the extradition of Lilu l-King while discussing the return of Paul Attard, a suspected serial smuggler. Paul Attard is the owner of the shipping management company called Patron Group. The Minister for Foreign Affairs confirmed that the Libyans are “potentially” using Paul Attard as leverage.
Inevitably, the portrayal of the situation seems to be that Paul Attard is a victim of justice and is being used as leverage by the Libyan authorities to get at Lilul-King. The issue here at hand is that Paul Attard is not actually a “victim” of circumstances.
Paul Attard was extradited to Italy on the alleged smuggling of 10 tonnes of cannabis aboard a fishing-vessel called The Quest. Italian prosecutors had accused him of involvement, but the court acquitted him after the prosecution failed to prove that he owned the vessel involved.
Paul Attard’s lawyers involved a coterie of Malta’s most active and well-connected criminal lawyers including Franco Debono and Jose Herrera (coincidentally, Franco Debono is also Lilu l-King’s lawyer). Jose Herrera was a Labour government minister. Despite getting away with smuggling charges both in Italy and in Malta, he found no impunity in Libya and was arrested in Libya over drug smuggling in July 2024. He has been kept under arrest there ever since but here’s what’s also interesting.
Paul Attard has a very extensive history of criminal investigations by the Police in Malta and the internal and official Police file on Paul Attard does not disqualify the accusations of the Libyan Prosecutor. To put it milder terms, within the authorities, no one is vouching for Paul Attard and the insistence to repatriate him to Malta stems from political action and not from any legal concerns towards his health or his legal status.
Paul Attard is still classified as a high-risk and potentially dangerous criminal by Police sources and his extradition back to Malta is clearly not something being sought by the Police.
Feature photo from Times of Malta.
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