Between the corrupted and the corrupter

Removing prescription on corruption charges for politicians and not for those who corrupt them is not only unfair but could result in blackmail. It should be removed for both.

James Debono 30 January 2013, 12:00am

2 min read

Imagine this scenario.

I am a corrupt businessman. A particular Minister is on my take. My ass is covered by the 10-year prescription period but the Minister's ass is not. After 10 years I call on the politician to tell him; pay up or I will reveal everything. He pays.

Imagine a second scenario.

I am a government employee. Incidentally I step on a sensitive piece of information, which clearly shows that corruption is taking place in the Ministry where I work. I have a family, which depends on me. I am scared. Without the protection of a whistle blower's act I will never pass this information to the police. I have no choice but to pretend that I have never seen anything.

Now imagine a third scenario.

I am a corrupt businessman. A particular Minister was on my take. He is now giving me trouble. I threaten him that I would avail myself of the whistleblower's act if he does not keep his part of the deal. He remains on my take.

Reflecting on these three different scenarios I have come to the following conclusion.

1) The removal of prescription should apply to both the corrupted politician and the corrupter because both are equally guilty.

2) The aim of a whistleblower's act should be that of protecting civil servants and employees in both public and private companies who report cases of corruption and not to protect people involved in acts of corruption.

3) One has to acknowledge that to unravel cases of corruption it is sometimes necessary to grant qualified 'pardons' to people who were themselves involved in acts of corruption. But this has nothing to do with the scope of a whistle blower's act. Ideally the judiciary should regulate the issue of such pardons.

4) Removing the prescription on corruption for both corrupted politicians and those who corrupt them ensures that the untimely death of a particular politician will not prevent the police from investigating his business associates who build their wealth by plundering the public purse.

James Debono is MaltaToday's chief reporter on environment, planning and land use issues, ...

More from James Debono

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@briffy. Power does corrupt however in Malta we have a scenario where the 2 major parties are both very reluctant to introduce a legislation to curb corruption and give a transparent overview of their own secret finances. Isn’t it logical to conclude that both parties have a number of skeletons in their closet. I believe that all voters, irrelevant which party they support, share a fervent desire to eradicate corruption in politics or at least, to reduce it to a minimum and it is actually the 2 major parties which are the major stumbling block.

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briffy, the enormous difference is that in Malta, corruption has become institutionalised. You know, like you used to say it was, in Mintoff's time. Your party is worse than Mintoff's as you have always portrayed yourselves as Holy Catholic Saints and more Catholic than the Pope!!

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Corruption is not something unique to Malta. It has existed everywhere since times immemorial and will continue to exist, since it's innate in humans. Just in the last 24 hours cases have surfaced in Nigeria, Poland, Spain and in Harvard University. Where there is money there is temptation to corrupt. This doesn't mean that one shouldn't do everything possible to limit it. Malta is no exception, that's why we all should push for any malpractices to be brought to the surface. Our laws provide for very effective deterrents but still human nature being what it is the greed for money is very strong in man and people will do anything to discover methods of becoming rich and get away with it.

Nazzareno Pace •

If a minister has been part directly or not of corruption, he should be justices, even if it means all ministers in a cabinet. Doing something for your benefit Ida no go in politics. It seems that these last few years there was a lot of corruption that many are trying to hide. But the moment of truth is nearing and hopefully a whistle blowers act will bring to light all the corruption as long as it is retro-active as what the PN proposed would have started from the date of the law.

Paul Sammut •

The article enforces the current widespread perception that corruption is very present among the powers that be. Doing nothing about it and maintaining the status quo is not an option. We have to start tackling this disease as best we can. Fine tuning can be done along the way.

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The morale of this article is that the perception of corruption is so embedded in our country that one can actually propose countless scenarios to describe it. Fact is that an administration in power would hardly want to address the issue because it will surely backfire and get it’s own hands burnt. And after 25 years, it may even go as far as frying the party in power to a crisp. Really James, I would have expected you to draw out some logical consequences that trying to curb corruption in Malta and leaving in the hands of our politicians is like entrusting the sheep to the wolf. All you are doing is showing us the many ways to skin a sheep.

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James I'm sorry to see that you are trying to muddy the issue and confuse people. Readers would take what you write much more seriously if you didn't always show an entrenched distrust in anything related to the PL. This is an excellent proposal and that's it. Too many have found it easy to get away with murder in this country!

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Why you come up with many complicated scenarios. The answer is simple for the 3 of them. KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE. There are so many people who are in temptation to mal practice on their job but many are those who keep away. Look at the Financial Insitutions. The employees know the consequences they will carry. So what makes an MP different. I think it is a case that MPs should be trained periodically and go through assessments like Financial Institutions do so that employees are made aware of the consequences incurred when mal practice is operated in such businesses. However, who said that the prescrition will not be elevated across the board. BUT, it was said publicly that Parlaiment should lead by example and the rest will follow. So, your article could be written in a more 'enlightened' manner.

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"Removing prescription on corruption charges for politicians and not for those who corrupt them ....." James would you please be so kind as to tell us where in the PL's proposal this is said? In any case if a minister is approached with a kickback mits his duty to report him therefore in any case of corruption concerning a ministerall the major blame lies with him. What you have written in your article is also covered by the Whistleblower's Act which also removes time barred cases. I am not sure if your article was to mislead intentionally or you actually did not see the co-relation between the two laws.