There should be a clear deterrent to prevent people in political authority from using and abusing their power to prevent investigations and prosecutions into their conduct or their political associates and allies.
It should be a specific offence for a person in public office to seek to obstruct the police, prosecutors, investigators or other officials such as the National Auditor, the Ombudsman or the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life from carrying out inquiries of the nature such as the present one.
Obstruction can include perjury, making false statements to officials, witness tampering, jury tampering, destruction of evidence and others. Obstruction should also apply to overt coercion of court or government officials via the means of threats or actual physical harm, and also apply to deliberate sedition against a court or law enforcement official to undermine the appearance of legitimate authority.
A possible model could be Section 139 of the Canadian criminal code.22
Had we had these legislative tools in place, law enforcement would have been empowered to act on several occasions before and after Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed. There have been several episodes of suspect destruction of public records, the use of private email accounts for official business to undermine the audit and verification process, refusal to give evidence or contradictory – and therefore at least in part necessarily opaque – evidence and other measures taken by Joseph Muscat and people close to him to circumvent obstacles to the corrupt initiatives they undertook.
As in several other jurisdictions, we think it should be a criminal offence for a public official to conduct official business using private means of communication, such as using private email accounts or private messaging tools.
These recommendations and others in this section carrying suggestions for legislative reforms will no doubt fractionally overlap with existing, and under-utilised, provisions in our Criminal Code such as specific provisions on misappropriation, malversation, obstructing or assaulting public officers in the course of their duty and other provisions covered in specific administrative laws.
Needless to say, the introduction of such legislative improvements will require detailed research and extensive consultation.