Trust in Malta police tackling corruption falls by 6 points

The percentage of Maltese who believe that the police and other national authorities are doing enough to tackle corruption has dropped by 6 points since 2015.

A five point drop was also registered in the percentage who think the police are doing enough to fight money laundering.

This emerges from a European Commission survey on European attitudes with regards to security issues carried out in June 2017 and published this week.

The decline in the percentage of respondents who believe that these two issues are being tackled by the authorities coincides with the Panamagate revelations and magisterial inquiries on alleged money laundering by Minister Konrad Mizzi and Prime Minister Chief of Staff Keith Schembri.

The survey shows that 46% of Maltese believe that the police and other authorities are doing enough to tackle corruption.  Only 43% believe they are doing enough to fight money laundering.

A far higher percentage (60%) believe that the police are doing enough to fight drug trafficking.

Confidence that the authorities are doing enough to tackle human trafficking and sexual exploitation (52% ) and cyber crime (59%) is also relatively high.

On corruption and money laudnering, a tenth of Maltese say they ‘don’t know’ when asked whether the authorities are doing enough on these two issues which dominated the electoral campaign. The survey was held only weeks later.

The percentage of Maltese who believe that the authorities are doing enough to tackle both issues remains three points higher than the EU average.

Only 3% think that Malta is not a safe place to live, while 1% think their town or village is not a safe place.  The survey was carried out before the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia which may have raised concern on security in the country.