Malta told penalties for judges’ bribery ‘too low’
Council of Europe report: penalties for trading in influence for judges and public officers ‘too low’ and ‘limited’
James Debono Penalties against officials found guilty of trading in influence – one of the charges brought against Chief Justice Noel Arrigo – must be increased, a report by the Council of Europe’s monitoring body on corruption has warned Malta.
The report recommends that penalties for trading in influence should be increased “to render the law effective, proportionate and dissuasive.”
The maximum penalty for trading in influence under Maltese law is not more than 18 months’ imprisonment. This sanction was considered low in comparison with the maximum sanctions provided for all the other corruption offences in Malta.
According to Maltese law, anyone found guilty of promising or offering “any undue advantage to any other person” by exerting “improper influence over the decision-making process” is liable to the punishment of imprisonment for a term from three to eighteen months.
The report was issued in October before former Chief Justice Noel Arrigo was sentenced to two years and nine months of imprisonment on charges of bribery and trading in influence.
The former judge was found guilty of having accepted €11,650 from businessman and childhood friend Anthony Grech Sant to reduce the sentence of convicted drug trafficker Mario ‘l-Imniehru’ Camilleri from 16 to 12 years on appeal. Another judge and member of the three-man Court of Criminal Appeal, Patrick Vella, was also found guilty of bribery in 2007 and served two years in prison.
The report also calls on the government to revise Article 117 of the Criminal Code, which foresees a maximum imprisonment of five years for judges bribed to release or discharge someone accused of a crime. Neither Arrigo nor Vella were charged on this count.
The COE’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) said its view was that “these rules incorrectly convey the message that these specific categories of bribery offences are less serious than other forms of bribery of public officials.”
Indeed, the report considered the “limited sanctions against judges” as provided for in Article 117 as “too lenient in comparison with other bribery offences of public officials of the Criminal Code.”
The report notes that Malta was shaken by the judges’ corruption scandal in 2002, when the then Chief Justice and another judge had accepted bribes for lowering a prison sentence.
It also notes the large number of convictions for trading in influence, relating to systemic wrongful issuing of navigation certificates by the Malta Maritime Authority. Over 800 mariners’ licences were allegedly issued by an MMA official and his clerk, by falsifying documents and accepting bribes for personal profits.
But the report notes that there have been no convictions regarding private sector bribery.
In the most recent case, two MEPA officials and members of the development control commission were acquitted of trading in influence in issuing a permit for the developing of a discotheque on EU-protected land in Mistra – the case has been appealed by the Attorney General.
The report also calls for amendments in the Criminal Code to include the prosecution of bribery of Maltese and foreign arbitrators.
Malta is currently in the grips of new bribery allegations in the award of the €200 million tender for the extension of the Delimara power station. The tender award is being investigated by the Auditor General.
According to leaked emails between a former Enemalta employee Joe Mizzi, and a director of winning tenderer BWSC, Mizzi said he would “tap into higher political sources” in the middle of the tendering process.
BWSC has already been investigated on the allegation of a US$90,000 bribery by CEO Soren Barkholt to a company agent in the Philippines in 1999, and who in turn forwarded a large part of that sum to the chairman of the public authority responsible for the adjudication of a public tender. But when the alleged crime took place in 1999, Danish law did not cover the prosecution of crimes committed outside Denmark by Danish companies.
The matter was so serious that it warranted a review by the OECD working group that scrutinised the country’s enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating the Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. Its main recommendations were that Denmark amend the law to increase the penalties for foreign bribery.
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