They’re only going to prosecute the corrupted and not those who corrupted them

Published: February 16, 2014 at 11:47pm

There are around seven Enemalta officials facing prosecution and one who has been sentenced to imprisonment already for their involvement in the smart meters scam.

Those are the ones who were corrupted.

But there are also more than a thousand (at the last count) individuals who corrupted them. We tend to forget, here in Malta, that corruption of a public official is a two-way crime: for a public official or state/state corporation employee to accept money to do something he is not supposed to do is a crime. But for a private citizen or business owner to pay a public official or state/state corporation employee to do something he is not supposed to do is also a crime.

Yet the government has said that no police action will be taken against those 1000 people who paid Enemalta employees to fix their smart meters so that they could steal electricity.

Yes, steal electricity. That is exactly what it is. There are two crimes for which these 1000+ people should face prosecution: theft of electricity and corruption of a state corporation employee.

Instead, the government said, they will “invited” – yes, that’s the word he used, invited, which means it is going to be voluntary – to pay what they owe for the electricity they took and haven’t paid for.

I can understand that there are considerable difficulties in a mass prosecution of 1000+ people, and there are also many thousands of votes involved because each of those 1,000+ people have families and some of them even own hotels and other businesses from which the Labour Party may have taken (received?) donations or switcher votes. But still.

This afternoon I watched the prime minister as he spoke in some kind of arena surrounded by admirers, the same sort of set-up he used in his election campaign, broadcast by the Labour Party’s television station.

“No action will be taken against the CONSUMERS”, he said. That’s right, il-konsumaturi. So now those who corrupted state corporation employees so as to be able to steal huge amounts of electricity are ‘il-konsumaturi’.

What I find most disturbing about this is that it is a police matter. In a sound democracy there is full separation of powers between the police and the government, but there was the prime minister announcing on television that those who corrupted state corporation employees and stole electricity will not face criminal action or have to deal with the police.

Surely that is for the Police Commissioner to decide, and even then, he is not free to decide because the law obliges him to prosecute where he has knowledge of a crime.

Then we are expected to believe that there was no government intervention in the decision to halt the prosecution of John Dalli.




33 Comments Comment

  1. George says:

    “they will be made to pay what they owe for electricity they took and haven’t paid for, and will also be made to pay “an administrative penalty”.

    The Prime Minister said nothing new. This procedure has been applied by Enemalta against consumers who are caught tampering with meters for many years. There is nothing new in it.

  2. ciccio says:

    According to Malta Today, the ones who corrupted the Enemalta officers are “energy beneficiaries.”

    http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/PM-urges-energy-beneficiaries-to-come-forward-20140216

    When I saw that title, I thought the paper was referring to the households which receive energy vouchers.

    There must be some interesting names in the list of those beneficiaries. If Muscat offers them an amnesty, we will never get to know who they were.

  3. silvio farrugia says:

    I totally agree with you. They should be prosecuted as well. What kind of a country is this (I keep asking myself).

    We are supposed to be ‘equal under the law’.

    It is like when amnesties are given for tax payers or VAT payers. Does it pay in this country to be law abiding? One can reason ‘yes’ for one’s conscience I suppose.

  4. Joe Fenech says:

    “Yet the government has said that no police action will be taken against those 1000 people who paid Enemalta employees to fix their smart meters so that they could steal electricity.”

    This is a very dangerous precedent to set.

  5. P Shaw says:

    One needs to ask how many of the 1,000 who bribed the seven Enemalta officials are Malta Hotels and Restaurant Association members/switchers and how many of them appeared and spoke “Taht it-Tinda” during the MLP election campaign.

  6. Gahan says:

    When in the past someone was suspected of meddling with the electricity meter, he would find a group of people accompanied by a police officer readily armed to investigate whether the meter was tampered with.

    Later you would find out that the person was dragged to court and prosecuted.

    I expect Enemalta and the police to prosecute each one of those who had their meters tampered with and that their service is suspended until they settle their corrected bills.

    That’s what people expect.

    But wonder of wonders, the PM would call this kind of justice “a witch hunt” as if these electricity thieves were some innocent society non-conformists.

    The ‘big fish’ was caught: Konrad Mizzi’s associate, Louis Attard.

  7. canon says:

    The government’s inaction against those 1000 people for corrupting Enemalta officials is sending a wrong message that crime pays.

  8. Maradona says:

    Of course, because that would mean too many votes lost.

  9. M. says:

    Ironically, the corruption market was, in this case, born out of Muscat’s constant “brainwashing of the masses” regarding the ‘exhorbitant’ cost of electricity in the run-up to the election.

  10. mc says:

    Shameful. The poltician should not interfere in the work of the police. It is for the police to decide who to prosecute and, if there is enough evidence, the police is obliged to prosecute.

    And yet the PM declares in a public forum that the police will not prosecute the ‘consumers’.

    He has no sense of boundaries nor correct moral behaviour.

  11. AE says:

    This is an incentive to the rest of us to try our luck at bribing. Hell you might not get caught. And even if you do you won’t have to pay more than what you owed in the first place.

    The least they can do is slap on a serious penalty. But as you point out what is must worrying is that the PM is deciding that they are not be prosecuted. So what are we supposed to do now – sue the Police Commissioner for not instituting legal action when he s obliged to and defending the rule of law in Malta?

    That must be an interesting lst of names. There must be some favourite or four amongst them for this decision to be taken.

  12. Gaetano Pace says:

    WHY DID JOSEPH MUSCAT ADOPT TWO WEIGHTS AND TWO MEASURES WHEN IT CAME TO METING OUT JUSTICE? Compare the way he is behaving with the thousand people who stole electricity to the way he is behaving towards Simon Busuttil for saying that he interfered in the John Dalli case.

  13. Osservatore says:

    This is so typical of Malta. Law abiding citizens get the doubtful honour of paying their bills and dues on time whilst those who are not, either get away without any punitive sanctions or have these waived or reduced to laughable negligible amounts. This has been the case under the PN administrations in so far as VAT and tax dues were concerned and where significant arrears subject to penalties had said penalties reduced to a minor percentage of the amount due. Where is the fairness in all this one may ask?

    So here again, we have the corrupted officers being prosecuted for facilitating the corruption, and the real culprits, the beneficiaries of the act of corruption itself, getting off lightly.

    In so far as I am concerned, both parties are thieves and that makes them criminals. Both should be prosecuted against on the one hand to make good for their theft, and on the other, to serve as a deterrent to any such future schemes.

    Like the majority of Maltese, I paid for all of my energy consumption and each one of my bills was paid on time. When I wanted to reduce these bills, I invested in a PV system on my roof. Where is the fairness in all of this if the thieves keep getting away with their crimes?

    If the government lets these people get away with their crime, then it also becomes a party to the theft itself.

  14. Paddy says:

    Probably, was one to analyse the list of 1000 corrupt Enemalta subscribers, one would find that most of them are Red. It looks likely, they did not want to ‘ippaxxu il Gvern Nazzjonalista’ by paying their actual bills.

  15. Jozef says:

    What he’s saying is that il-konsumaturi were justified in stealing electricity.

    Berlusconi limited himself to saying he understood people who evaded Italy’s tax regime.

  16. Angus Black says:

    Going by last election results, some 53% of those who bribed Enemalta smart meter installers, are Labour lackeys.
    Joey must not upset them unduly and take to court on theft and/or corruption charges.
    Instead he is inviting them to come up voluntarily and pay up. I can see long queues forming by people with money in hand.
    Viva l-Lejber, viva t-trasparenza!

    • ciccio says:

      Going by those election results, the majority of those cases voted Labour to FURTHER reduce their electricity bills.

      And they probably went around before the elections complaining about their electricity bills and that they can’t wait to see Labour in power to REDUCE their electricity bills.

      Hilarious. Who exactly was it who used the term “social parasite” recently? Ah, yes…

  17. Profs says:

    Unfortunately, it is not solely up to the police since according to Criminal Code 283A:

    No proceedings shall be instituted in respect of any
    offence of theft of electricity except on the complaint of the injured party even if the offence is one which falls within the competence of the Court of Magistrates.

    Which makes the situation even more terrifying if Enemalta, part of which is about to be privatised, is being instructed not to pass the list of offenders to the police.

    [Daphne – The government is not the injured party. Enemalta Corporation is. And as you point out, it has been written out of the equation.]

    • H.P. Baxxter says:

      Enemalta Corporation is now practically owned by China. If you steal from the Chinese government, you are usually sent to “re-education” camps to be “harmonised”.

      Well, what are we waiting for?

  18. C Falzon says:

    Separation of powers ? What was that again?

  19. Andy says:

    Everyone involved, whether an Enemalta employee or “consumer” should be prosecuted. End of.

  20. pat says:

    Not sure I agree with you.

    It all depends on who approached whom.

    [Daphne – Actually, it does not. In the definition of a bribe, like the definition of a purchase, whether the buyer approached the seller is irrelevant except where one party refuses to play ball. So if somebody asks for a bribe but the person he approaches refuses to pay and instead reports him, only the person who asked for a bribe is prosecuted. And if somebody offers a bribe and the other person does not take it and instead reports him, the person offering a bribe (if he has offered it to a public official) is prosecuted, or should be under the law.]

    a) I can’t see how the individual consumers could tell the Enemalta employees how to tamper with a smart meter. It strikes me therefore that certain consumers were being offered a “service.” This leads me to conclude that the employees were the originators and the consumers the ones “tempted.”

    [Daphne – It makes absolutely no difference, Pat. If somebody offers you a corrupt service for a corrupt payment, and you accept the deal, you are a party to that corruption. Unfortunately, your reasoning on this matter is prevalent in Malta and it is extremely frustrating. Whether a public official asked you to corrupt him or you asked him whether he would allow you to corrupt him, you are still committing the crime of corrupting a public official.]

    b) Whilst I can imagine that a dozen people could agree amongst themselves and approach 1000 persons. I can’t see how a 1000 people could get a plan together to approach and corrupt the dozen.

    [Daphne – They didn’t have to. They were approached, they accepted to corrupt a public official to tamper with an electricity meter so that they could electricity, and there they are guilty on two counts: corrupting a public official and stealing electricity.]

    Having said that I’m sure the consumers knew what they were doing was wrong and they must now face the consequences.

    [Daphne – That last remark is eyebrowing-raising, Pat, really.]

  21. Giraffa says:

    The government news release makes it clear that the names of those who corrupted the Enemalta officials to tamper with their meters will not be made public.

    This persuades me that some big significant switchers and their businesses/hotels were involved. And to ensure that no names are leaked, they are creating a special office where the bribers go and pay back the money they saved, which will be in a special fund. Ahleb Guz! The Labour Party is seeking to gain more from this case of corruption.

  22. Aunt Hetty says:

    It would be very interesting to find out who the ”energy beneficiaries” are whose faces Joseph Muscat seems so desperate to save.

  23. Pawlu says:

    Daphne you should also highlight the fact that the Whistleblower Act which the government keeps mentioning is irrelevant to the consumers who bribed Enemalta officials. There’s a good post about it here:

    http://markanthonysammut.blogspot.com/2014/02/whistleblowing-lies-and-half-truths.html

  24. M. Cassar says:

    Konrad Mizzi is quoted in Times of Malta today, saying that the government has not seen the list of names of consumers who have stolen electricity.

    It has been passed on to police, he said. But he could say that they cut across all strata of society and include commercial and domestic users.

    How is it possible to ascertain the characteristics of a group of people if one does not know who they are? Surely Dr Mizzi did not intend any verbal trickery?

  25. Gia says:

    Muscat has no right, duty or any other power vested in him to interfere with investigations into real or suspected crimes. Nor do the police or the AG have the power to decide not to prosecute.

    The law is exhaustive on what grounds the AG can say ‘nulle prosequi’. Bribing is a crime against the public and thus the police have to prosecute ex officio.

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