Euro Topics reports that it emerged last week that employees of a power company had manipulated around ten percent of all electricity meters in Malta to the benefit of consumers.
The extent of the fraud puts the entire country in a bad light, the liberal-conservative daily The Malta Independent believes:
The one thing that beggars belief in the smart meter tampering scandal is that more people are suspected of rigging the system in Malta, than in the whole of the United States in one year. ... But what is it? Is it the shady side of our Mediterranean character, or what? Is corruption so institutionalised that it is in our blood? Maybe it is something that has gone back years and years, to times when the only way to actually get anything done was to grease someone's palm."
