The government appears to have got itself into something of a twist in its replies to that damning rule of law report drawn up by the European Parliament.
The government, in its lengthy replies published yesterday, says on the one hand that, 'it is worth noting that media reports may spark a police investigation into an individual or organisation.'
But on the other hand, it says in the reports published by the media implicating politically exposed people showed 'there were not sufficient grounds to suspect criminal activity' and that an investigation would have 'clearly been a waste of police resources.'
First, the positive. The government at large has acknowledged what both the Chief Justice and the Justice Minister have independently confirmed - that the police force does not even need a 'reasonable suspicion' to launch an investigation, and that the police can investigate anything based on any piece of information that comes its way.
In his interviews with those MEPs a couple of months ago, the Police Commissioner repeatedly said that although FIAU reports concerning Politically Exposed Persons Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi had reached his
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office individually in April, July and November 2016, those reports had never been formally reported to the force. When the police commissioner was asked why the force had not investigated those and other reports that had later made it to the public domain - either of which scenarios enable the police to begin an investigation and why an investigation had not been started there and then, his replies, according to the MEPs report were 'not conclusive'.
He instead repeatedly argued that the police have 'limited competence' to start investigations and that the FIAU reports were not backed up by 'subsequent reports'.
Such replies from the person who is in charge of law and order in this country were shocking and they were quickly corrected by the justice minister and the attorney general. And now the government itself has back that up. But now comes the problematic part. How does the government reach the conclusion that the reports published by the media implicating politically exposed people, based on draft reports by the government's own anti-money launder watchdog, show 'there were not sufficient grounds to suspect criminal activity' and that an investigation would have 'clearly been a waste of police resources'?
We were under the impression that it was the police force that would determine whether there are 'sufficient grounds to suspect criminal activity' and we were also under the impression that is should be up to the police to determine what would be a waste of their resources and what would not be.
This holds especially true when those facing those potential investigations are two of the closest people to the Prime Minister - his chief of staff and his leading minister.
The government's replies give the impression that the standing order at the police headquarters could very well always have been not to investigate these people, that there is nothing to see here, and that any such investigation would be a mere waste of resources.
Let us hope against hope that this is not the case, for if it were, it would mean we have no more than a police force on puppet strings that will never investigate anyone in authority unless of course the appropriate blessings are given.
from The Malta Independent http://ift.tt/2s6qmaW
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