Angelo Gafà gets parliament’s green light to become next police chief

Malta's prospective new police commissioner has insisted he will not allow any political interference in the course of his duties.

Angelo Gafà said he would also ensure that there were in place clear policies within the police corps on how to deal with attempts at interference.

The police chief nominee, who is currently the corps' CEO, was being grilled by MPs before the Public Appointments Committee on Monday, in a historic first. The committee approved his nomination.

Only members from the government were present in the committee, with the Opposition having boycotted the grilling in protest, claiming that, despite a new process to appoint the police chief, nothing had in fact changed.

“All the time I've been in the police corps, since 2003 [...] I never gave any regard to whom the individual concerned is, and once you send such an outright message, nobody would come knocking on your door [to interfere]. In all my years in the force, nobody tried to interfere in my work... and I would not tolerate this to happen,” Gafà said.

He said clear policies have to be devised of what has to happen in such cases. “If you have a [rules] framework in place, the amount of interference will go down.”

The parliamentary grilling was only done by Labour MPs because the Nationalist Party boycotted the hearing (Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday)

Asked by Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo - who was replacing MP Clayton Bartolo on the parliamentary committee - what he would do to deal with financial crime, including within the context of warnings given to Malta by Moneyval in the past years, Gafà said that the police force's role in this regard was part of a chain.

“The police corps is only part of a chain - there are some cases which ended up in our laps because there was a lack of control in the financial framework. But I'm not here to blame anyone, I'm here to say how we intend to strengthen investigations and prosecutions,” Gafà said.

He said that the financial crimes department had increased it staff, and that it would also be recruiting civilian professionals in the field. He also underlined that the success of financial crime investigations depended on cooperation with other national authorities, and, due to its cross-jurisdictional nature, also on international law enforcement bodies.

In this regard, he hinted that investigations were experiencing a “bottleneck” when it came to cooperation from non-European jurisdictions.

'I was first to draw attention to abuse in corps'

Asked by MP Glenn Bedingfield whether, as CEO of the corps, he felt he should take responsibility for the traffic section overtime scandal, Gafà said he had been at the forefront of drawing attention to the issue.

“[As police corps CEO] I was the first person to draw attention to abuse in the corps. It wasn't specific to the traffic session, it was in general. My job was to concretely identify a problem and give recommendations - I did both of these things. I had identified the problem and gave solutions, but they were not taken on board at the time,” he said.

A sense of duty to the country

Gafà underlined that he felt a sense of duty towards Malta, which is why he had applied for the post.

“The reason I applied for the post is one: I feel I have a sense of duty to the police corps and the country. The corps has given me a lot, and I feel that while I've always contributed in all my roles, I think this is the culmination of all that,” Gafà said.

He spoke of his wish to strengthen people’s trust in the police corps. The success or otherwise of the corps does not only depend on its members, he added.

“The police do not have a monopoly on the operation of the corps... our principle mission is not only to solve crimes, but to prevent crime, and this can only be done if the people are partners with us in our work,” he said.

Gafà acknowledged that the police corps had been the subject of criticism in recent years. He said that some of this could have been because it did not communicate enough with the public. “I am here to improve the motivation in our members, and I intend to lead by example,” he said.

The method of the police commissioner's appointment was changed earlier this year. A call for applications was issued and candidates were interviewed by the Public Service Commission.

The commission then gave Cabinet a shortlist of two names.

Prior to the law being changed, the police commissioner was chosen solely by the prime minister with no call for applications and no grilling.

The government has insisted that the new process makes the appointment more transparent.

Cabinet said that it had decided to nominate Gafà because he was “the most qualified candidate”.