Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/612918
WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT WEDNESDAY EDITION WEDNESDAY • 9 DECEMBER 2015 • ISSUE 446 • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY €1.00 Newspaper post Party finance rules still raising watchdog's eyebrows Critically high thresholds, an incoherent regime, and anonymous €500 donations fail to gain support of Council of Europe's anti-corruption watchdog, but party fi nancing rules no longer 'globally unsatisfactory' MATTHEW VELLA THE anti-corruption committee in the Council of Europe has declared that a dis- closure threshold of €7,000 for donations received by political parties from a sin- gle source, including in times of elections, remains "critically high", with no disclosure rules laid down for independent candidates. Malta has registered significant progress implementation of nine proposals de- signed at strengthening party financing rules, GRECO (Group of States Against Corruption) said in a compliance report – namely implementing satisfactorily five out of nine recommendations, and only partly implementing four recommenda- tions. It said that despite the adoption of the fi- nancing of the political parties Act (FPPA), a number of critical concerns persist. Only donations exceeding €7,000 to po- litical parties are to be disclosed with ref- erence to their source, which means that the very high disclosure threshold has not been reduced since the last assessment made by GRECO. In the case of political parties' accounts, GRECO said that the threshold for the disclosure of individual donations had not been lowered. Additionally, the committee said that two sets of rules seem to apply for inde- pendent candidates: that according to the FPPA they must submit within 60 days of the election a donations report to the Electoral Commission, but according to the Electoral Polling Ordinance they must submit within 31 days an election expens- es report that includes donations. GRECO described the framework as be- ing "somewhat confusing". "It is unclear whether the information on them is to be published or not. It would be desirable for the provision of the two legal acts to be further aligned… GRECO acknowledges that, fully in line with its requirement and as envisaged by the 2014 Bill, the spending limits in respect of can- didates have augmented and now stand at €20,000, which is a welcome develop- ment." Under Malta's party financing laws, anonymous donations below €50 and so-called "confidential" donations below €500 could still be received by political parties without being registered. PAGE 5 Police report 'wasn't criminal complaint' says Speaker Speaker Farrugia says he asked police to ascertain Opposition leader's car was registering correct mileage, but that police asked duty magistrate to appoint court experts, kick-starting an official inquiry THE Speaker of the House of Representatives, Anglu Farrugia, has denied having filed a crimi- nal complaint with the police over the alleged misrepresenta- tion of fuel consumption for the car of the Opposition leader. Simon Busuttil was forced to suspend his chauffeur after the parliamentary accounts office established a pattern of car mile- age that was far below the maxi- mum amount of fuel allowance being claimed from the Parlia- ment office. In what turned out to be an em- barrassingly-timed revelation, it came just one day after Busuttil launched on Sunday a good gov- ernance pledge of 109 proposals in a vow to clean up politics. But Farrugia has told MaltaTo- day that he was not aware that his police report had escalated into a magisterial inquiry. "Together with the head of cor- porate services and the Clerk of the House, it was our collegial decision to refer the mismatch of mileage with fuel costs claimed to the police: we felt that it had to be a credible, public author- ity that could establish whether a technical issue – let's say, a car engine problem – was responsi- ble for this discrepancy," Farru- gia said. He said that at no time had his office made a report alleging fraud. "Ours was not a criminal complaint," Farrugia insisted. The Speaker said he learnt of the magisterial inquiry from Op- position leader Simon Busuttil himself, who emailed him the news that he had suspended his driver and was pledging full co- operation with the inquiry. PAGE 6