This most likely was payback for exposing someone's offshore holdings, and the response was chosen to send a message: "Do not expose", and was done in such a bald-faced way that this crime's occurrence presupposes the existence of the very corruption needed to facilitate getting away with it, that any investigation would need to uncover.
TL;DR - that a crime like this, which requires corruption to execute and get away with, can happen, presupposes the investigative apparatus is unable to investigate it, with high probability.
Pretty sure pseudonymity is just as effective for investigative reporting bylines as using an identifier tied to the address at which your family sleeps.
I'm just not sure I believe that. Do you think the Snowden leaks, for example, would have had the same spread and impact if it was just an pseudonymous data dump and without someone like Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian adding a 'face' and legitimacy to the information?
Most pseudonyms give away plenty of information to be able to be tracked by an assassin or other kind of "influencer".
Exactly part of the EU meisterplan - 1st economic union, then, oh wait, that doesn't actually work without sacrificing national sovereignty.. guess we need to have a federal european government afte rall, and all the better if noone is elected.
Heil das Heiliges Römisches Reich!
You know that different dialects of German were just some of the many languages spoken in the Holy Roman Empire, and not the official ones, right?
I agree that democracy in EU is far from perfect but no EU institution is beyond democratic control. All answer to democratly elected politicians.
> All answer to democratly elected politicians.
In much the same way that when acting in cabinet, the 'prince electors' were still subject to their local populace.. it is a second tier.
The entire reason that the EC is controlled by the member governments rather than by the directly-elected parliament is because that arrangement maintains national sovereignty of the member states. A directly elected European executive would have a competing mandate with the national governments; an EC controlled by the member governments is naturally subservient to them.
I understand this is by treaty currently so your points tsnds; my argument is that creating standing armed bodies such as this is a step down the path to a change in such arrangements (as basically all of history will demonstrate)...
Eh?
They work at the whim of the parliament don't they?
Democracy in EU is only second order because commission is made up government representatives of each member.
Increased effort to fight corruption on a local level and dismantle the tax loopholes which facillitate such things would probably be the right path..
Can the EU be stopped? Nations will plead the 50th slowly over time.
That's the only answer I believe is feasible.
Man, this thread is great for a chuckle. The same people saying that wouldn't say, "The solution to police brutality, is more police to watch the police." Then we'll need more police to watch the police to watch the police. Then we'll need police to watch the police to watch the police to watch the police. ad nauseam.
How about we all agree that international politics and corruption in government is not a simple topic with easy catchphrase answers? What's government consist of? People. And money/power. The two hardest things on the planet to keep from becoming corrupt. Anywhere you have lots of ONE of them, it's a nightmare of security, regulations, and social engineering. Government has both. Limitless nameless faces all trying to climb over each other to get ahead. It's Hollywood without the talent or the regulation.
Like most problems, the defense is isolation and segmentation.
You build a bureaucracy where the folks running said bureaucracy are disconnected from meddling by the people at the top. When you go to DMV, there isn’t significant corruption in that process. It’s equally painful for everyone. There’s some reshuffling of appointees between administrations, but the bureaucracy does what it does.
> ...quite frankly, it would be nice also in Western and Northern Europe to have a supranational investigative body in stead of or in addition to parliamentary hearings, commissions etc. that often require parliament majority which rests with the government parties anyways.<
Alleging discrimination is serious, so you should at least make sure to actually read and think aobut a comment before accusing it's author of being discriminatory.
But having unleashed, powerful agencies they do not control is hard to swallow for many politicians, so international anti crime agencies are often limited to advisory roles.
So, something like the Europol? (And there's also Interpol).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
Malta doesn't seem to be in the list of participating countries, though. It's also only for financial fraud.
As an Eastern European EU citizen...fuuuuck no.
Yes, high level political corruption is bad and this assassination is tragic. It should be fought. But do you think that by just introducing another body, things will be much better?
People will be people. Corruption, dealmaking and scheming, together with greed, is as old as mankind. It will happen regardless, and it happens in Western countries as well (Belgium, France, the UK, etc); just in a different way.
Currently there is at least one EU member state that is playing dirty, basically stealing money from its people. (State guaranteed profits for friends' companies.) And unsurprisingly Hungary doesn't want to participate in the EU Prosecution ( http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2017/... )
So, how do you know there wouldn't be more terrorist acts without those regulations? Of course, the burden of proof should be on those who proposed the regulations in the first place to argue for the effectiveness of the regulations, but your framing of the problem remains inefficient.
Furthermore, yes, people are people, and greed is universal. But we can measure corruption (and fraud), and we see that in states/countries with certain institutions failing (or absent) result in more fraud/corruption.
And it's very much like herd immunity. Our banking privacy is already lost ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Reporting_Standard ) it'd be good to have something keeping those tax authorities in check. (And who will watch the watchers, yes. I know.)
Do you think there is less high level political corruption in France, Belgium, the UK or Germany? There is definitely less fraud going on, and the corruption is less obvious, but it's still there.
One simple example: go to any western EU country. Take an entrepreneurial family that, say, employs 500+ people in a country. It is almost certain they will get 1) better tax rulings, and 2) the tax authority will be more lenient when dealing with them. They will get away with more.
And if an overeager civil servant doesn't understand that, the case will likely be taken away from him and moved to someone who does. Because political connections matter and that's what happens. If you're part of the "elite" of any country, there's a lot that can be done by knowing the right people.
I don't know, but it's not "unknowable".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#R...
There are known ways to minimize corruption. Transparency and public accountability, public tenders, well documented public procurement workflow, mandatory conflict of interest disclosures, and so on.
It's not rocket science.
And yes, I know. There are always favorites, friends, family. That's the thing that a well functioning judiciary should be able to post-correct. (Similarly how EU market liberalization must be coupled with enforcement of no-most-favored-nation, the same treatment should apply to local family owned and non-local non-family owned companies.)
Of course, the populace has to be the driving force, to elect people who promulgate these equality ideas from the top.
It can be as Democratic as people make it.
Western states are already privileged, they have the population advantage.
Anyway, it's not like corruption (and market efficiency) analyses are just made up.
Case in point, Hungary. Billions of euros went there and at least 30-40% got funneled to "friends and family". The good old Putin model. Dear Leader has nothing, his yearly wealth report is whiter than snow, his friends on the other hand .. well, they are the best businessmen on Earth: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/what-s-bo...
The other "interesting" thing is that OLAF (the EU's anti-corruption office) found a lot of irregularities in Hungary, recommended investigations. And nothing happened. (The Prosecutor General of Hungary ... happens to be a good friend of those involved.) See also: https://budapestbeacon.com/olaf-says-hungary-misappropriated...
Transnational authority is extremely terrifying and western Europe has an extremely horrible and tragic track record when allowed to decide the fate of other people.
> It can be as Democratic as people make it.
That's a nice pipe dream.
> Western states are already privileged, they have the population advantage.
I meant that force would be used disproportionately against poorer states
> Case in point, Hungary. Billions of euros went there and at least 30-40% got funneled to "friends and family".
I have opinions about the wisdom of subsidies in general.
Yes and no; the current EU is put together with accountability structures that make sense for a trade body (which is after all what it evolved from) - as a Brit it reminds me of our (deliberately apolitical) civil service. In principle it could be possible to reform the EU into something with the kind of accountability structure appropriate to a political body, sure, but it's an enormous institution with a lot of cultural inertia.
Sure, the failure case of a strong EU is much worse than the current situation (EU-dystopia), but the current situation is very much like a limbo, it's kind of like an opportunity, and it won't exists forever. (Poorer states will be left behind, because even though they are subsidized by the EU, without structural changes, the whole system will break into pieces.)
These money that did disappear purchase loyalty of locals at the power. It will stop only when these people will be no longer needed to push for EU interests.
And so the EU police will also be fair.
Federal police by definition has a lot of eyes on the process so it's the opposite.
To make matters worse, Malta is a tiny island state where "everybody knows everybody". I was there just a few months ago and you can comfortably walk around the (stunningly beautiful) capital in a few hours and see the entire nation in a matter of days.
While Malta supposedly has a great deal of corruption, it's not considered more corrupt than so many other member states in Southern and Eastern Europe, and quite frankly, it would be nice also in Western and Northern Europe to have a supranational investigative body in stead of or in addition to parliamentary hearings, commissions etc. that often require parliament majority which rests with the government parties anyways.