EU to probe money laundering in Malta

BRUSSELS: The European Union’s justice commissioner said on Monday she will visit Malta in the coming weeks to look at its anti-money laundering moves and check on how an investigation is going into the murder of an investigative journalist.

Her visit will increase pressure on the EU member after the European Parliament expressed "serious concerns" about police independence and international money-laundering on the island in a resolution adopted last year.

The resolution was adopted after Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, an anti-corruption campaigner, was killed in October by a car bomb. Commissioner Vera Jourova said she planned to go to Malta by June to discuss "several" open issues with the authorities.

Her decision came as a group of local and international media groups, including Reuters, began following up stories covered by Caruana Galizia, in an initiative called the Daphne Project. Malta, together with other EU states, faces a sanction procedure for its delay in adopting new EU rules against money laundering.

Jourova said she wanted to address this issue in her forthcoming visit and also the strengthening of the Maltese agency to tackle money laundering, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit. "I of course want to inquiry about the state of play in the investigation on the murder of Madame Galizia," Jourova told a new conference in Brussels.

Three people have been so far charged for the execution of the murder but police have not yet identified who ordered the killing. "This investigation is not just about bringing to justice the people who have actually made the bomb, and made the explosion that killed Daphne.

This is also about uncovering who gave the order to do that," the commission’s vice president Frans Timmermans said, speaking at the same news conference with Jourova. "We will keep pushing the Maltese authorities," he said.

Jourova also said she will discuss Malta’s programme to sell citizenship to wealthy individuals. Timmermans insisted that EU passports can be sold only to individuals who have a clear, "demonstrable" link to an European Union country.

"This is a question that, I think, can be raised with the Maltese authorities when discussing the passport scheme," he said. The Commission forced Malta in 2014 to amend its scheme so that only people who had effectively resided on the island for at least 12 months could obtain citizenship, but the country has since allowed foreigners to buy passports with laxer requirements, the Daphne Project consortium found.