FinTelegrem reported that a new study on money laundering around online gambling in the EU found that Italian mafia organizations laundered billions in illegally generated assets via online gambling in Malta between 2015 and 2022. Of the €6.7 billion in total assets seized in investigations, €4 billion alone came from online gambling investigations related to Malta. Malta has an utterly shocking problem with law & regulatory enforcement as analyzed by Kevin Cassar in The Shift.
In his today’s analysis Kevin Cassar asks the critical questions: why is Malta so attractive to criminal organizations and what makes Malta such a haven for some of the most feared tough guys of the criminal world?
If one follows Cassar’s answer to these questions, one must be shocked as an EU citizen about the conditions in Malta. For example, there are no applicants for the prestigious job of Deputy Commissioner of the Maltese Police. Also, other jobs in the police would not be filled, because nobody wants to have these jobs in the fight against organized crime.
Our police force has repeatedly and consistently failed in its mission to protect citizens from serious crime. Year after year it closed both eyes to rampant corruption engineered at the highest levels.
Kevin Cassar in The Shift (link)
We have already reported many times about the many problems of the Maltese regulators MFSA, MGS, and FIAU and their “Regulation by Friendship & Benefits”. But apparently, there is also a massive problem in the area of law enforcement in the smallest EU member state. If one follows the report’s conclusions, then Malta has a massive corruption and look-away problem in the entire enforcement area. Is this compatible with EU membership? Probably not. Because the fight against cybercrime, illegal activities, and money laundering in the EU can only be as strong as the weakest link.
