‘We Will Overcome This Together’: Bernard Grech Calls For National Effort To Overcome Greylisting
Nationalist Party (PN) leader Bernard Grech has called for national unity following Malta’s greylisting by the Financial Action Task Force.
In a brief video message published after the result from today’s FATF plenary was made public, Grech said he was saddened by the fact that Malta had been placed on the list of jurisdictions requiring increased monitoring, adding that it was a punishment being inflicted on the Maltese people.
“It is not the time for me to remind you how we got here, but a time to work together to reach national consensus,” Grech said.
The PN, he said, wanted to foster confidence in the sector and for this reason, he appealed to the government to set up a joint task force with the PN in order to plot the way forward for the country.
“The FATF will be meeting again in October and we need to make sure that Malta is again on the agenda, this time for it to be removed from the grey list,” he said.
“This can only happen if we work together on a national level, with the participation of both sides of the House and together with social partners and experts in the financial sector, in order to implement more convincingly and with national consensus, the FATF’s action plan.“
Grech said he was confident that a united Malta could overcome this latest challenge, as it had done other challenges in the past.
Moreover, he said that a government led by himself would increase transparency, promote integrity, increase scrutiny and change the mentality in the country’s highest institutions.
In a statement following Grech’s address, the Nationalist Party said that Grech would not be travelling to Brussels for a meeting of the EPP group and would instead be calling a parliamentary group meeting this evening at 8pm.
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