Daniel Zammit was prosecutor in Enemalta smart meter cases

When Enemalta’s smart meters were discovered to have been tampered with in their many hundreds last year, with rampant theft of electricity as a result, the prosecution was carefully controlled.

The prosecutors were brothers – a bad idea in normal circumstances but a good one when you want to perpetrate corruption and abuse. More conveniently still, their father Ray Zammit was and still is the deputy police commissioner, and was even promoted to acting police commissioner when the smart meter brouhaha was ongoing.

Police Inspectors Daniel Zammit and Roderick Zammit prosecuted a few Enemalta officials who had interfered with the meters of those who bribed them so that electricity could be stolen by homes and businesses.

When asked why they did not also prosecute those who actually stole electricity after bribing Enemalta officials to fix the meters, Inspector Daniel Zammit said he had been informed that the government would be offering an amnesty, so it was pointless beginning their prosecution.

But around 1,000 of those who stole electricity did not take up the amnesty and yet Inspectors Daniel and Roderick Zammit prosecuted only some 25 of them.

Up to the day he was ‘boarded out’ of the police force in April, Daniel Zammit was still prosecuting Enemalta officials and failing to prosecute those who bribed them and who stole electricity.

Then in one swift, five-day move, he joined Enemalta as a consultant to the audit department, which deals with electricity theft.

Why would Enemalta want to reward with a 60,000-euro salary and a consultancy job a police inspector who failed to prosecute so many of those who stole the electricity it produced?

Your guess is as good as mine, but I suspect it has something to do with collusion between government-controlled Enemalta and Inspector Daniel Zammit on who not to prosecute.

As a police officer, Zammit was obliged to prosecute all law-breakers without fear or favour, but on that electricity-theft list there will have been very many names of Taghna Lkollers and others who the government did not want prosecuted. Both Enemalta and Inspector Daniel Zammit will then have obliged accordingly, with Enemalta then obliging further still by putting the prosecutor on the payroll as thanks.

All this will have been sewn up neatly while keeping the intellectually challenged blabbermouth Konrad Mizzi, Minister for Enemalta, out of the loop, only to have him unwittingly sabotage his mates’ cunning plan anyway by blowing a gasket before the prime minister could intervene.