A €39 million cryptocurrency donation that Malta’s top charity refused to accept has split the country down the middle – with Prime Minister Robert Abela urging the Malta Community Chest Fund (MCCF) to reconsider, and President Myriam Spiteri Debono insisting she was protecting the fund’s integrity.

The controversy stems from a 2018 pledge by Binance, then the world’s largest crypto exchange, to donate $200,000 worth of its own coin, BNB, to Maltese cancer patients. Back then, Malta was pushing to establish a reputation in the blockchain and crypto space with Binance being one of the first companies to relocate to the island. Seven years later, that $200,000 has ballooned to around $39 million, but instead of saving lives, it’s sparked another moral meltdown.

On Thursday, Times of Malta reported that the MCCF had formally walked away from Binance’s donation, citing reputational concerns about the source of funds and the company’s legal troubles. Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges last year and was sentenced to four months in prison. The company itself was fined $4.3 billion after U.S. prosecutors accused it of failing to report over 100,000 suspicious transactions, some linked to terrorist organisations.

A ‘bogus’ donation

President Spiteri Debono confirmed that she and the MCCF board had “worked hard to protect the fund’s reputation”, describing the pledge as a “bogus donation” and warning it would be unfair to the charity’s good-faith donors. “In the last years, there was always this question mark regarding these people… regarding whether they were in good faith,” she said.

Prime Minister Robert Abela, however, wasn’t convinced. Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Abela said it “upsets me that a sum like that could possibly be lost”, urging both sides to find a way to salvage the donation. He suggested the MCCF was being too puritanical, arguing that if there were doubts about the funds’ provenance, they could be addressed responsibly through existing anti-money laundering mechanisms.

“Where there is an opportunity for funds to come to our country, for the benefit of patients, I don’t think we should be so… more puritanical than we have to be,” Abela said. He also pointed out that Malta had “passed with flying colours” in recent international scrutiny of its financial systems and argued that countries criticising Malta for rejecting Binance would “be the first to welcome it themselves”.

Holier than the pope

The story has quickly turned into another Malta-style culture war – between the ‘holier-than-thou’ camp and the pragmatic realists. Former MP Franco Debono summed up the populist frustration in a Facebook post written in Maltese:

“If the money came from a dubious or unexplained source, shouldn’t it be confiscated by the government? And when it is, isn’t it used by the state to heal the sick, among other things? So why not just use it straight away to heal the sick? It would be almost poetic justice – dirty money used for good, instead of being spent on luxury and excess. This is just another case of people trying to appear holier than the Pope. And who suffers in the end? The patient.”

Meanwhile, others – including financial analyst Paul Bonello and former Repubblika president Robert Aquilina – have backed the President’s decision, arguing that reputational damage can’t be washed away with a big cheque.

For some, the Binance saga is a classic case of Malta’s transactional morality: when money talks, ethics take a backseat. For others, it’s proof that Malta has learned from its past – resisting the temptation to whitewash shady deals under the guise of charity. And somewhere between crypto bros, constitutional purists, and cancer patients caught in the crossfire, sits $39 million worth of unspent coin, frozen in digital limbo.

Do you think the MCCF should keep the money?