Bill paid for Moneyval

A few guys went to a pricy restaurant. They had it all. Lobster, steak, caviar with the best wine of the house, and they broke a few glasses too. When it was time to pay, they left the bill for us.

That’s the situation with the impending Moneyval assessment. And mind you, we’re already paying that bill.

For while all of us are concerned with the real risk of grey-listing and the consequent asphyxiation of Maltese financial services under a truckload of additional bureaucracy, the noose has already closed very tight to conform to the nine Moneyval criteria.

While the FIAU was missing in action as Panama Papers and Daphne Caruana Galizia drew the crime board for them, they went overdrive after that. Not with Pilatus, Nexia BT or on Keith Schembri’s world wide web of secret companies, but on the local butcher, the family investment enterprise and on lawyers, estate agents and accountants down the road.

Three years after failing to cast its net to catch the sharks, the FIAU net is now catching the minnows. Money laundering rules which were designed for such sharks have now become a daily concern for all of the good willing which were never meant to be within their remit.

According to news reports, Government has now received the Moneyval assessment draft which should go for decision by the Financial Action Task Force to decide on the grey-listing. Whatever the outcome, a propaganda ploy is already in place. If it’s negative they will shift the blame on others. If it is positive, they plan to come out as the saviours of the Maltese economy. They won’t fool us.

For all those in the industry know that they already paid the price for their excesses. The politics that was supposed to advance public good ended up the biggest threat to the public good.

The gradual increase of compliance rules and scrutiny over the last two years to avert Moneyval has already rendered a whole series of services unprofitable for the smaller Maltese businesses.

A whole generation who looked up with ambition to a career in financial services find their prospects re-examined, downwards.

They spent early morning hours revising notes or writing assignments to strengthen their qualifications. Now they find themselves working in an environment where they have to commit double the hours for the same money or less. Opening a bank account for a client has become a saga of repeated due diligence and double analysis of source of funds. Cross-border transaction reporting has become a matter for heightened anxiety under pain of hefty fines even for a mistake in good-faith. Oh yes, good faith is gone. That was a thing before labour.

What used to be possible with a team of three people , registering companies, handling accounts and attracting clients, is now taking four or five. So while we cross fingers to avoid the grey-listing we must take stock that we already are in a lighter shade of grey.

The assessment of the Financial Action Task Force should take this into account. What is under the hammer is no longer the abuse of power and blatant corruption by top government actors, but the fate and livelihood of thousands of Maltese professionals and others depending on them.

The latter are already paying the price. It would be ridiculous to make them pay an even higher price.

What needs to be paid still is the political price for leading us here. We had the goose laying the golden eggs, and we put it in peril with negligence and abuse. The Labour government still needs to give account for all of this. It is us, not the FATF, which will need to ask for our pound of flesh!