What Is The European Union Defending In Malta? 

Something so evil is happening in Malta that even evil incarnate must be gasping for air. 
 
It’s not as if corruption, loot, political skulduggery and cheating is new in the European Union (EU). European majors like France, Germany, Italy and the King Kong of it all, the United Kingdom (UK) are past masters and I’ll skip patronising Norway and tedious Sweden. But here, in one of the EU’s smallest countries we are looking at the a cover up of a cold-blooded assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta’s best know investigative journalist blown up in her car just outside her home some two years ago.  The family did not have a complete body to bury. People jeered at them as they had at Caruana Galizia who had been telling them their emperor is naked. 
 
Now, waves of irrefutable documentary evidence (gathered by Caruana Galizia’s sons and family) has washed up around Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s office plunging the country into a crisis it has not seen since the former British colony became an independent country in 1964. 
 
What does the EU do? After wasting precious time expressing fidgeting distress and dismay and some feigned version of shock to learn how close the assassination is to Muscat’s durbar, it is sending a fact-finding mission on Monday.  For me the only question that remains is this: What did Muscat know about the murder and when did he decide he “didn’t” know anything about it? 
 
The EU knows that Muscat wanted to replace Donald Tusk as the President of the European Council. Brussels has the power to withdraw voting rights of EU members if they threaten the independence of the judiciary in their countries as happened with Hungary and Poland. Opposition politicians are calling for similar action. Why is Malta being treated with kid gloves? 
 
It cannot be for absence of evidence because the documentation of the money trail is staggering, leading last weekend to charges being framed against Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech, head of a gambling and real estate empire for participating in a criminal organisation, complicity in causing an explosion and complicity in the murder of Caruana Galizia. He has pleased not guilty and claimed he would implicate Muscat’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembri as well as other ministers in the labour government. Fenech has been arraigned and his assets have been frozen. The penalty for complicity to murder in Malta is a life sentence. 
 
All else has been investigated and documented by Caruana Galizia’s family, in particular her Pulitzer Prize award-winning investigative journalist and software engineer son Mathew Caruana Galizia, his brother Paul Caruana Galizia as also her middle son Andrew Caruana Galizia. Not a word too soon, not an accusation without evidence. Mathew Caruana Galzia has travelled to numerous hearings and committees in the EU, crisscrossing its institutions seeking justice for their mother and clearing space for investigative journalism. Watch here 

Caruana Galzia whose was assassinated in 2017. Her blog Running Commentary had reported on links between secret companies in Panama that Schembri and Konrad Mizzi (a minister who resigned last week) set up after Muscat’s Labour Party won elections in 2013. Before her murder, she had linked both men to secret payments made by Fenech to a Dubai based company called 17 black. 
 
Since her assassination, her sons have been documenting, studying, investigating document after document, following the money trail that finally led to the flurry of events last fortnight when a sniffer dog smelt cash at the airport in the belongings of a many bound for Istanbul. 
 
The incident led to the arrest of a taxi driver Melvin Theuma who said he had acted as an intermediary in Caruana Galizia’s contract killing. He was ready to speak and he sought the Caruana Galizia’s family lawyer to defend him. 
 
Suddenly everything that the brothers and their team had been documenting and their mother had discovered over years felt into place with such speed that Muscat’s Malta went from being one of Europe’s smallest states to EU’s biggest threat to freedom of expression, free speech and investigative journalism. 
 
The world saw ridiculous scenes of journalists being locked up briefly in a room after a presser and reports that ministers were crying in cabinet meetings for fear of being accomplices even as the area around the government building faced a lockdown. As people poured out in the streets demanding justice for Caruana Galizia, Muscat, now no longer publicly visible, seemed to be showing the little finger to Europe from behind the scenes. 
 
 In a statement this week, the family has urged Muscat to step down so that a proper investigation can follow. The delaying tactics and fact-finding missions are signals that it’s not over. 
 
Europeans call Malta a launderette, a country that sells passports and bank accounts for the world’s rich and famous. It is reportedly a get away for dirty money to countries as close as Azerbaijan and as far away as Venezuela. With less than half a million people (population of Bangalore in India is 8.426 million) think of a cross between the gangs of Wassypur (India), the Mafia (Italy) and the Medellin cartel (Colombia) and the picture begins to emerge. 
 
Think of Caruana Galizia, fighting this mafia while they were in power. That’s an important distinction. She was writing about them while they were in power. She was alone. 
 
She was blown up for doing her job, twenty five years apart from Italian magistrate Giovanni Falcone who too was blown up as his car travelled in Italy leaving blood on Europe’s conscience. Falcone’s travel plans were known only to the government of the day, every route and movement monitored and “protected.” Read here.
https://www.republicworld.com/opinions/what-gives/daphne-and-giovanni-lessons-for-the-european-union-from-indian-journalism-and-law.html
 
At the time of writing comes news that Chris Cardona who had suspended himself from parliament this week in the fall out of the murder probe has been reinstated a Minister of Economy. Muscat is expected to stay till January 8th 2020. 
 
Till recently, Schembri, Fenech, Mizzi, Cardonna, even Muscat et al were names that meant little people outside Malta. All that has changed in the past few weeks. In addition to Malta, the EU owes a few explanations to the Caruana Galizia family.  Either Brussels believes in democracy and the freedom of democratic institutions in all its member states or it doesn’t.  The world is watching.