The Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit: a grave situation in which two ‘non-compliant’ officials have been summarily removed

Published: June 30, 2017 at 5:31pm

“PN expresses serious concern over removal of two top FIAU officials”, the headline says today. Serious concern? I express serious concern about the amount of sugar in soft drinks.

More is required to convey the full and true gravity of this terribly dangerous situation. But when you are raised in Maltese you never quite grasp the scope and potential of words in other languages and how nuanced they are.

I say this because language shapes thoughts and thoughts shape language, and one of the reasons there are so many problems with thinking in Malta, just as there are in the United States of America, is vast numbers of people have a lexicon of very few words.

If they had more thoughts they would need more words to express them, and if they had more words it would encourage them to have more thoughts.

I will write about the gravity of the situation at the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit later on this evening or tomorrow, because serious concern simply doesn’t cut it. Another state institution has been captured and decimated – not only for the protection of the crooks in government, but equally crucially, for the harassment of the enemies of those crooks and the government they run.

The ‘next five’ is when entrenchment and consolidation takes place, and when enemies are purged, harassed and eliminated. This is dangerous to everyone. It makes Malta an unsafe and threatening place in which to live, and no amount of money can make up for the choice people are then forced to make between sucking up and losing self-respect (and peace of mind) or living in constant fear of retaliatory harassment.

Meanwhile, you will have read the reports of the removal of two top FIAU officials, so please post your comments here.

Jonathan Ferris, the former Economic Crimes Unit police officer who moved to the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit late last year and has now been summarily asked to clear his desk along with another top FIAU official.