We have just finished watching over two weeks of the best which the human spirit has to offer during the Paris Olympics.

Elite athletes from all over the world who have overcome setbacks, difficult backgrounds and adversity to become the best in their chosen sports, demonstrating the type of resilience, discipline and sheer determination which take your breath away.

In stark contrast, at the same time, the events unfolding here in Malta are an ugly reminder that there is a nasty side to human nature. We woke up on Monday morning to the grim news of yet another domestic violence victim. Her boyfriend slit her throat, fled the scene and was then shot dead following a three hour stand-off with the Police.

But this type of deadly (all too frequent) violence is not the only problem we are facing.

All around us we have examples of an endemic disease which has infiltrated every single sector. Human beings have become so blinded by the opportunity to get their grubby hands on more money that they will do anything. The latest alleged scandal at Identity Malta which has been exposed by Dr Jason Azzopardi is just another in a series of fraudulent schemes which have swept through Government entities.

According to his sworn application, “the racket allegedly saw the issuing of an estimated 18,000 Maltese ID cards to third country nationals on the basis of fake documentation and false declarations.” Dr Azzopardi is also claiming that thousands of fake certificates were issued, mostly marriage certificates documenting fictitious marriages abroad between third-country nationals, the majority of them hailing from Egypt or Libya, and UK nationals at a time when the UK was still an EU member state, which were used to apply for ID cards.

These claims still need to be verified but I do not think we should have to wait for a Magisterial inquiry which could take ages. These are damning allegations on a very large scale and the deafening silence from the Minister on this matter does not bode well. For thousands of fake ID cards to be issued to TCNs using other peoples’ addresses and for these fake marriage certificates to be accepted so blindly, there obviously must have been collusion by a whole web of public officials who were in on it.

As always, when there are things happening in the country which reek of abuse, it is because someone has figured out a way to illicitly make money off it. As we have seen with other scandals which have rocked this administration, the rot is real and it starts from the top in the way the wrong people are handed out government jobs who then embroil others in their corruption.

There is also something endemically wrong when ID cards can be so easily faked and no one in ANY department picks up on it. We use our ID cards for everything; without one you cannot even pick up a parcel at the post office. So isn’t it high time that when we present an ID card, it is keyed into a centralised system which can flag any anomalies? It’s true that there are many properties which are being rented out to multiple tenants, but if it is a rental property it should immediately be tagged as such in a link to the housing authority. If it is not tagged then it is either a private residence and the address is being used illegitimately, or else there is another form of abuse going on because the owner has not registered the lease according to law and is evading tax. These types of checks and balances to verify data across all departments can be done at the touch of a button with the right software, but there needs to be the willingness to implement them.

There are other questions to be asked as well; why are the people who have been receiving official mail from Identity Malta and other departments in the name of TCNs, who are fraudulently using their address, not reporting this immediately? Some of the letters which Dr Azzopardi posted on FB date back to March and he has now advised people to file a complaint with the Data Protection Commissioner. I find it odd that he needs to tell them this because if I received such mail with a strange name using my address I would not simply tear it up, ignore it or hang on to it, but follow it up and make sure my address does not keep being used. After all, we are not talking about a handful of such letters, but potentially thousands.

Identita’ has flatly denied issuing 18,000 fake IDs and said that it had carried out an internal investigation and passed the information on to the Police. So does this mean no false ID cards at all were issued, or less than that number? Either way, the Home Affairs Minister still needs to face the public and the press and answer some hard-hitting questions.

The longer he remains silent the more damning the whole thing looks.