Wednesday, March 7, 2018

'Western Civilization': Maltese will do anything for money

accountability transparency crime corruption Catholic politics business offshore money laundering tax evasion

The good news is that it is only a few Maltese who lack values and will do anything for money. Most Maltese are good-natured, law-abiding, good Christians with a very strong set of values.

The bad news is that the few Maltese with no values or with rotten values either lead our political parties or are oligarchical in their approach to the national economy and the sharing of the wealth that is currently being created. The major part of this wealth (circa 90 per cent) is in the hands of these few greedy souls, and our trade unions and party faithful stay silent.

Yet, in the last week, there have been a growing number of thinkers, writers, commentators and organisers of conferences holding speeches and writing commentaries and letters all converging on to a common theme. They are all converging to the concept and, to the criticism thereof, that the present government and oligarchs close to the government have lost all interest in common values to mankind in their wild gold rush, leaving behind the majority of Maltese wage earners, government employees, pensioners, farmers, fishermen and small shopkeepers.

In a couple of articles written earlier this year, especially in my vision for Malta to become a Republic of Light, I had indicated the basic immoral and unethical basis upon which our taxation system is built. Our financial services industry, gambling industry, passport sales to multi-millionaires, tax evaders and money launderers, and our system to attract foreigners to retire in Malta on low taxation of remitted incomes rather than low taxation on all their income have all caused damage to our reputation because of the weak or inefficient controls and the political scandals exposed by the Panama and Paradise Papers.

It’s true that all these activities were introduced, for the most part, by the former Nationalist governments, but were added to by the present Labour government. What was fundamentally unethical had been quite strictly administered under the Nationalists and, for this reason they managed to avoid too many reputational issues and undue scrutiny.  (more...)


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