EVEN BEFORE the assassination on Malta in 2017 of a journalist and anti-corruption campaigner, Daphne Caruana Galizia, the EU’s smallest state was a cause for concern—a tightly knit Mediterranean society in which reciprocal favours and obligations frequently trumped respect for the law; an island with a financial centre that had outgrown the regulatory capacity of its authorities; a country some of whose politicians had disconcertingly cosy relationships with tax havens, illiberal democracies and outright dictatorships.

Malta, moreover, has a constitution inherited from its former British colonial masters that is better suited to the needs of empire than those of a contemporary democracy: one in which the executive wields decisive powers over institutions that should be independent.

Three men have been arrested and jailed, charged with the murder of Ms Caruana Galizia. But, as a report prepared for the Council of Europe and published on April 3rd shows, a lot more needs to be done if Malta is to have the sort of checks and balances that would ensure that graft was curbed and the rule of law prevailed over political self-interest.

The report, by the Council’s anti-corruption watchdog, the Group of States against Corruption, known as GRECO, says there has been “no visible disciplinary or criminal justice response” to claims of impropriety “even when some of them have been confirmed by subsequent audits, for instance, of the National Audit Office. The senior officials who have been suspected of criminal or ethical misbehaviour are still in function.”

The report warns that state institutions and the public administration must not “be a tool at the service of the ruling majority”. It says that Malta “clearly lacks an overall strategy” for ensuring the integrity of government officials and that the capacity of the criminal justice system to respond to accusations of corruption is hampered by anomalies in the distribution of responsibilities between the attorney-general, the police and the inquiring magistrates that in practice lead to paralysis.

Top of the list is that the police have the responsibility for deciding whether to investigate and prosecute suspected offences. And, as GRECO’s drily adds, “The police has the reputation of being traditionally heavily subjected to the executive branch of power.”

Ms Caruana Galizia’s investigations, published in her final years on her widely read blog, took place against a background of rapidly increasing prosperity under the Labour government of Joseph Muscat, who has been in power since 2013. In the year before her death, she reported that one of Mr Muscat’s ministers and his chief of staff had New Zealand-registered trusts. The leak of the so-called Panama papers (documents from a law firm, Mossack Fonseca) showed both men also owned firms in Panama.

As GRECO’s report notes, Malta’s unit dealing with suspicious financial activities sent a report about the two officials to the police. “Shortly after, the police commissioner went on leave and he subsequently resigned for health reasons, before being subsequently re-hired by the government.” In the meantime, the police did nothing to investigate the allegations. Mr Muscat reshuffled his cabinet, but kept the minister along with his chief of staff. Both deny any wrongdoing.

Ms Caruana Galizia also claimed that the prime minister’s wife owned another Panamanian firm. A judicial inquiry concluded in 2018 that there was no evidence of criminal activity by either Mr Muscat or his wife. But, GRECO comments, the terms of the inquiry were defined by the prime minister’s lawyers and its full report has not been published. The ultimate beneficial ownership of the company at the centre of the controversy “could reportedly not be determined either”.