Malta, you might say, moves above its weight. The smallest country in the European Union is home to one of its emerging economies. Name a sector of goofy growth, Internet gambling, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, artificial intelligence and Malta to unite as a hub. An undeniable failure in the Mediterranean, Malta is proud of this momentum and its courageous personality. But as we first reported in December, there is a thin line between the edge and margins, the sun and the shadows. In addition to the old charms and new constructions, Malta has called for endemic corruption and dubious transactions. And then there’s the consultation of the murder of a journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, whose revelations have touched the bowels of the force too much.
Malta is found as an apple place to sunbathe in the Mediterranean, 3 small islands to a short ferry trip from Sicily and not much else from Liviaa, the southern gate of Europe. It’s hard to discriminate in your way of acircular here. For more than 3 millennia, Malta has been conquered or colonized through a global force and one and anyone has left its mark.
Most of the other 500,000 Americans here are Catholics, a culture that started early. It is noticeable that the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked here in 60 AD.
Mark Anthony Falzon: I find this to be a good metaphor of Maltese culture.
Mark Antho Falzon is a professor of anthropology and columnist for a native newspaper.
Mark Anthobig apple Falzon: The story is that St. Paul switched Maltese to Christianity. This would mean that Malta was the first country to convert to Christianity even before Rome. Therefore, we are the first and most productive Christians.
A small organization of crusaders, later known as the Knights of Malta, repelled the mighty Ottoguys in the 16th century. Under British rule, the Maltese survived more than 3,000 bombings of Gerguy and Italians in World War II.
Malta became independent in 196 and since then the rustic with little industrial production and little land has had to rely in some way to fend for itself.
The remnants of his mythical beyond have done his best to resist Hollywood producers, here were filmed quantities of “Gladiator” and “Game of Thrones”.
Europeans float here for an economic tan. Oligarchs, to document their superyachts.
Malta is in an online gaming center position.
But since it took over the workplace in 2013, the supply government has turned rustic into a mecca for emerging and confusing technologies like cryptocurrency and blockchain. The 45-year-old prime minister, Joseph Muscat, is the h8 priest of this new gospel.
These industries can thrive in this sunbig apple place, however, they are known to attract more than their fair percentage of dark people. But this is never very new. For centuries, Malta has hosted pirates and smugglers, scored what Falzon, Mark Anthobig’s apple, calls the “center of the stripes.”
Jon Wertheim: I find it ingenuity bound, a binding waste here.
Mark Antho Falzon: Uh, yes, and waste also means flexibility.
Jon Wertheim: Can that also be a concern, a preference for circumventing the rules? Flexibility in this direction?
Mark Anthobig apple Falzon: Definitely. Yes. The user who never bends to the rules is known as a tight guy.
Jon Wertheim: It’s a term of affection.
Mark Anthobig apple Falzon: No, a tight guy is never too wonderful to be. He’s naive.
According to similar entrepreneurship, the executive has announced a program, some call it a ploy, to sell passports to the world’s super-rich. A million spare? You can also buy Maltese citizensend and, as this promotional video shows, the accompanying European Union passport.
Promotional video: As citizens of Malta, successful applicants will have the wonderful thing about visa-free access to approximately 170 countries.
Jon Wertheim: Who buys those passports?
Manuel Delia: Russian tycoons, Chinese tycoons, Saudi tycoons, Nigerian tycoons.
Manuel Delia, a longtime net journalist and critic of government, said the show, estimated as the most virtuous billion-dollar friend, is necessarily a Trojan horse, allowing those with dubious goals to cross Europe’s borders.
Jon Wertheim: Why would you like a Maltese passport?
Manuel Delia: Because they want to stumble anywhere else in the world, they hide where they actually come from. Maltese passports give them not only freedom of movement at European airports, but also their money, their capital, Europe.
And loose movement America.
Jon Wertheim: US Airport, This Maltese game validated through the EU, passes directly through pasgame control?
Manuel Delia: no visa. Absolutely. So that’s a broad explanation why having it.
Candidates for the “Golden Pasgame program,” as it’s now called, must live in Malta for a minimum of a year, but if we check the adget dressed for a Russian tycoon, he brought us here. In a modest suburb and a ruined basement apartment that split in two.
Jon Wertheim: Let’s call it what it is. Is… it’s a fraud.
Manuel Delia: It is a fraud. It’s a fraud. What– what’s worse, it’s perpetrated by the state. It’s not just sanctioned by the state.
There are other countries in Europe where currencies can get a passport, but in small Malta it has contributed to the economic boom. And yet, if Malta is full of coins, it is bankruptcy in some other way. At least according to journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who has spent years recounting settled crimes and high-point corruption for Malta’s leading newspapers and then on her blog “Running Commentary.” When he announced the site in 2008, his son Matthew said he had temporarily become a must-see.
Jon Wertheim: How would you describe his blog, “Running Commentary,” to whom, who had never read it before?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: It is currently revolutionary.
She has become “Daphne”, and has also temporarily become a vilified figure in some corners of Malta. Violated through government officials, subjected to defamation attacks and death threats.
Jon Wertheim: Have you ever had the idea to say, “Mom, you’ll prefer a logical, logical blog. It’s a logical sting and provocation. Is it getting dangerous?”
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Of course she felt fear, and you could see it. She knew that the powerful people that she was writing about were closing in on her. They were using every possible means to shut her down. She knew that, and that frightened her deeply.
Then, after October 16, 2017, Matthew sat in front of his mother at the dining room table in the family home circle while she completed a blog post. “There are croks you see now,” he writes. “The stage is desperate.”
Just before 3 p.m., he went to trip to the bank.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: And then, 30 seconds later, I heard the explosion. And it was very strong.
Daphne’s vehicle crawled a mile across the street through the valley when a heavy bomb placed under her seat exploded and stopped a thick black smoke in the air. Matthew ran to the wreckage.
Jon Wertheim: So you think that’s where …
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I think that’s where, when, the bomb went off. This is marked through the forensic team. And that’s where a lot of meat, metal and plastic were.
The vehicle ended up in a box a hundred yards away, fed through a fireball. Matthew’s first intuition was to get his mother out.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I walked to the driver’s side and saw a fire. I didn’t see anything else about the car.
Jon Wertheim: There are giant apple tactics to kill someone. What do you think was the importance of challenging a vehicle’s bomb?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: It’s a dazzling way to kill my mother. A way to send us a message. To our family and some way to send a message to any user who is thinking of doing something contrary to the wonderful corruption in this country.
Jon Wertheim: W a symbolic gesture?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: That’s the case.
For the mourners who attended Daphne’s funeral, her murder symbolized how corroded Malta had become. Under a central authority that she believes not only tolerates corruption, but encourages it.
The list of scandals he has relentlessly exposed and pursued is too much to list here and includes accusations of cronyism, corruption and coin laundering. But there is a revelation that stands out … involving a recently closed shady Maltese bank through European authorities. He is said to have accountable for some of Malta’s connected highs, adding Prime Minister’s staff leader Keith Schembri. As Daphne recounted, Schembri allegedly received bribes for negotiating Malta’s $1 billion national strength agreement; and to pay to help Russian millionaires catch those coveted Maltese passports.
Manuel Delia: Keith Schembri is in business. He’s the Prime Minister’s chief of staff. He’s the most challenging guy in this government.
Jon Wertheim: Did you go to work today?
Manuel Delia: He went to the paintings …
Jon Wertheim: With … with that cloud flying over him?
Manuel Delia: Well, that’s impunity. That’s why I’m angry.
Schembri denies Apple’s wrongdoing. But the findings revealed in the pasgame bribery allegations through Malta’s own economic regulator made us think “moderate suspicions of coin laundering and/or proceeds of crime lifestyles.” Maltese justice officials are examining any of the sets of accusations. In addition, multiple investigations have been carried out through the European authorities, all raising serious questions about corruption in Malta. We have given all this to Glenn Bedingfield, a native member of Parliament and beyond the Prime Minister’s adviser.
Jon Wertheim: What’s your concern?
Glenn Bedingfield: I’m worried.
Jon Wertheim: Isn’t this about corruption?
Glenn Bedingfield: No, because I think there’s a crusade of smear to hit the government.
Jon Wertheim: All the best political friends accused of a crusade of smear –
Glenn Bedingfield: It’s a smear campaign full of friendship with a great political friend, yes…
Jon Wertheim: The EU, the European authorities.
Glenn Bedingfield: the EU. Can you quote an EU excerpt?
Jon Wertheim: I can cite an EU, for now. This is Ana Maria Gomes, MEP.
Glenn Bedingfield: Whoa, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Ana Maria Gomes.
When we met her, Ana Maria Gomes was a Portuguese member of the European Parliament who was leading an EU investigation into the rule of law in Malta. She was a component of an upcoming chorus of officials who see the rustic as a troubled child on the continent.
Ana Maria Gomes: The formula is essentially the best friend, as the Prime Minister finally controls the Attorney General, who also controls the police. No one’s on trial. And, of course, the feeling of impunity is fueled through this fact.
Ana Maria Gomes: And he considers us all.
Jon Wertheim: Something is bad in Malta, I hear you say.
Ana Maria Gomes: Yes. And such an exceptional island, and such wonderful people, such a proud story. But, I will have to mention that right now, in fact, the environment – political – is — is rotten.
We have asked several times to talk to Prime Minister Muscat, but we have been told that he does not have time. Instead, the executive proposed to Finance Minister Edward Scicluna.
Jon Wertheim: Don’t you see how other Americans who look at Malta from the outdoor wonder about integrity and corruption here?
Finance Minister Edward Scicluna: That’s never the image he represents. It sounds bad, but it’s not.
Jon Wertheim: I’m clear. This is a representation founded by several other governments in Europe:
Finance Minister Edward Scicluna: All accusations are all allegations.
Jon Wertheim: These are allegations of investigations. These do not appear as ad hominem attacks:
Finance Minister, Edward Scicluna: No. I’m not looking to minimize the accusations. The accusations are serious. But those are the st. You know, it’s up to the courts, their procedures and their experts to decide.
Daphne Caruana Galizia supporters have no confidence in these experts and procedures, especially a friend who solves her murder. After a high-level government raid nearly two years ago, three men were arrested, figures she did not know and did not mention, but few doubt that the murderous country was ordered through one of its defiant enemies.
Jon Wertheim: How will you know when you have justice?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: When all the other corrupt Americans I was talking about treated our counterattack like a giant channel they fed on for years. When they pay the price, then there can be justice for my mother’s stories. But there will also have to be justice for his murder.
The ancient walls, designed in Malta since conquest and colonization, are very high. But outdoor forces that may also have invaded the rustic once, now watch with concern, hoping to see if Malta can face and move from the center of the strips.
Produced through Michael H. Gavshon, David M. Levine and Aarthi Rajaraman.