Taking Stock 13 August 2026

Chris Lee writes:

AMONG the many privileges gained from prolonged visits to other countries is the gift of having one’s perspective widened.

Staying and mixing with friends, family and business friends exposes one to the views and knowledge of those from different cultures.

A month or two spread amongst Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and, mostly, Malta simply underlines the real unresolved problems of Europe and the world. If not resolved, heaven help our grandkids.

In no particular order we listened to concerns as follows:

1) The impossibility of taxes ever servicing the mind-blowing debt, most recently fuelled by political dimwits. The debt taken in by the G20 countries, the 20 wealthiest countries in the world, has risen from 98% of combined GDP to 112%, representing additional tens of trillions, from a base that was already unserviceable.

2) The unbudgeted cost of adapting to weather changes, unable to be funded by insurers, the shortfall being collectively hundreds of billions. The cost to countries who shift their goods from just one European river, the Danube, has been extreme just in the past few weeks.

3) The unbudgeted cost of funding a comprehensive defence system will be collectively hundreds of billions, to repel the threats posed by countries seeking to overturn world order.

4) The unbudgeted cost of providing for the new phenomenon of longevity, rising at an astonishing rate, life expectancy likely to hit three figures in many countries within three decades. Health costs may be addressed by technology and better diagnosis, helped by AI, and by sharing data, and by genomics. The up-front costs will be significant. Pension modelling has never used a 30-35 year time span for the average pensioner.

5) Immigration is often referred to as “ imported labour”, with no thought of granting permanent residency. Illegal immigration is now seen in places like Britain, Italy, France and Germany as being as threatening as war. Is such immigration uncontrollable? 

But it was the sixth issue, discussed in almost every meeting, that I had not anticipated.

Think the word “corruption”, probably written in capital letters, a behaviour that so corrodes social order.

No adult New Zealander would be shocked, corruption evident here for at least 70 years, just as it has been in Africa, Asia, America, Britain, Western and particularly Eastern Europe, indeed everywhere.

Many in NZ would recall the empires built on import licensing, inextricably linked with “political donations”.

Few will be unaware of the local government councillors and senior staff who have jumped up the wealth ladder mysteriously, while land is rezoned, or large contracts are let. Much of these infractions have been revealed in court cases, several in just the past few years.

Personally I will never forget the clandestine approach of a CEO of a large Christchurch company which won a lucrative subcontract, post-earthquakes. The CEO won the contract on the condition that a new kitchen was built for free for the fellow who was running the tender.

When South Canterbury Finance collapsed, many “deals” were done that could only be explained by the concept of brown paper bags.

How do we explain the stream of nincompoops and blundering political party people appointed to well-paid roles in Crown-controlled organisations, the dimwits often with well-known failures, which in any transparent process would have disqualified them from such appointments? (Read In the Jaws of the Dragon, a NZ book which itemises shocking examples of inexplicable behaviour.)

Well do I recall in 1980 being offered a matchbox full of gold if I would switch stationery contracts with the large company that employed me.

So let us not be pious, not even coy, about corruption in NZ.

Yet the details of corruption in Europe, presented to me from many sources, especially in Malta, were offensive and unforgettable.

Globally, the defence sector is synonymous with black hearted transactions, backhanders ubiquitous.

So, too, are major property developments, requiring rezoning or local authority endorsement.

Living in NZ today is a wealthy American, essentially a good man, whose US business was transitioned when he won a multi-million Federal contract. There was one small condition he discovered when he won the tender: he had to donate $1 million to the US President’s re-election campaign.

I record all of this to clear the way to discuss examples of deplorable events from recent times in Europe.

As examples have emerged in public, Europeans are forced to respond. The telescope can no longer be directed to a blind eye. The back stories are fascinating, as the largest examples of corruption illustrate.

In Malta, the electricity grid in 2013 was fuelled by Libyan oil as it had been for 40 years, the result of an agreement with Libyan leader Gaddafi and Maltese leader Dom Mintoff, just after Malta became a republic. Malta agreed not to tap a shared oilfield. Libya agreed to supply cheap oil for 40 years.

In 2014 the contract ended, the fixed price of oil no longer locked in at 1974 prices.

Malta’s electricity company had run up a €800 million debt to its largest bank, the Bank of Valetta. Stripped of cheap oil, the electricity company faced an unaffordable debt. The national party government declared the company’s value to be one euro.

Cynical people read this evaluation as a warning that the grid provider would be sold off to a consortium of political friends for little more than a sackful of wet pencil shavings.

The Maltese Labour Government, led by Muscat, persuaded a Chinese electricity provider to buy 33.3% of the Maltese grid provider for a total of €320 million. Russia would provide the gas.

China agreed. The conversion was successful. Today the grid is fuelled by LNG and partly by energy provided from Sicily. The company is worth billions, even if demand sometimes leads to closedowns.

Not long after, the government switched its LNG supplier to Azerbaijan. The Maltese people praised the Labour government politicians who had organised the deal. It saved the Bank of Valetta from collapse as well as providing a long-term good. When Russian gas was sanctioned, the Azerbaijan gas proved to be reliable, if more expensive, and not threatened by sanctions of Russian gas. From the start of the Ukraine war Malta has subsidised household electricity.  

So far, so good.

 As the deal was being done, various government leaders and their wives opened family trust accounts, and in countries like Panama and New Zealand, millions of now anonymously sourced money appeared in their trusts.

Did the people of Malta complain? In general, they did not fully understand the hidden details but in recent years the details have surfaced. They had long accepted that these sorts of deals were none of their business. They wanted a functioning power provider.

Along came a journalist with a family source in the electric gas company. Copies of emails were provided to her. The journalist had the evidence to expose the graft.

Before she did, in a frenzy of behind-the-scenes activity, three hitmen were hired. In 2017 they wired up her car and she was killed when she got in.

The court case, some nine years later, is still proceeding, with clear links exposed to the then Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, and his chief of staff and the deputy police commissioner, along with many other businessmen. The evidence exposed in the new trial continues to dominate conversation and media coverage. Corruption is one thing, murder is another.

All sorts of related corruption have been revealed.

The family of the journalist remain highly focused on revealing the corruption.

The Times of Malta sells its excellent daily paper with detailed coverage of the trial.

Are the people of Malta horrified, amazed or revolted; or are they immune to corruption?

When the subject is raised, within minutes the conversation switches to the remarkable transition of Malta from a Roman Catholic-dominated country with low wages, little ambition but happy people, to a bustling, high-wage, growing country where the much bigger debate is growth versus lifestyle. Malta is now the fastest growing economy in Europe.

In the past 10 years Malta’s population has grown by nearly 50%; its average wage has risen by more than 200%; its GDP per head has risen by nearly 300% and it now measures holiday poverty, which has decreased by 200%. (Holiday poverty is the number of adults who can afford an overseas holiday, usually in Europe, for at least one week every year.)

Ten years ago 72% of Maltese adults could not afford such a luxury. Today 26% cannot afford that luxury.

 (As an aside, holiday poverty seems a peculiar line in the sand by which to judge poverty. Malta has a comprehensive health education and Social Security system far better than any country with which I am familiar, bar Singapore and Switzerland. Surplus income for overseas holidays is surely not a subject to bring into a conversation about poverty.)

Perhaps a more relevant statistic for Malta is this: 20 years ago the Maltese people were the second slimmest people in Europe. Recent EU research identifies the Maltese as now the least slim people in Europe, some 65% of adults classified as overweight. The growth of income clearly correlates to different habits and consumption of convenience food. McDonalds has come to Malta.

Malta has grown its economy through a focus on tourism and education. Last year Malta, population 600,000, had 4 million tourists with very few of them backpackers at hostels. The forecast is that this will hit 5 million in a couple of years. 

It has 30 educational schools for foreign students, aged 12 to 18, most of whom arrive from eastern Europe, Spain and Scandinavia.

Malta’s growth has been turbocharged by selling its passport and residency for 1 million euros, conditional upon house purchases, employing Maltese people and using Maltese directors. The EU has recently banned the selling of passports in this way.

Property development is at breakneck speed. The tiny islands of Malta and Gozo combined are about the size of Wellington.

Foreign construction companies are building hotels, apartments and new infrastructure at an astonishing rate. We stayed this year in a hotel wing that had not been started 12 months ago.

There would be at least 100 industrial cranes at different works sites throughout Malta and Gozo. Roads are being dug up to build better and bigger underground facilities. Implicit in all of this is the rezoning of land. The Maltese love the higher wages that result from tourism and, silently, from the tax havens created to attract global companies, tax being applied at 5% rather than 35%. Many giant global companies now have a zombie office in Valletta, exploiting the 5% tax rate, probably at a cost to the US treasury.

But the rapid disruptive growth has not just been inconvenient. A nod and a wink is the public acceptance of more contributions to trusts belonging to public officials and politicians.

Malta especially, but Europe in general, knows how to nod and wink.

Unlike New Zealand, Malta has media outlets that thrive on intrusive, sometimes dangerous, journalism. A cartoon in the main newspaper recently portrayed the former Prime Minister’s chief of staff benevolently smiling and telling an interviewer: “Everyone knows I have a heart of gold. I just cannot remember who I stole it from.”

Malta has a wonderful social welfare system, a world leading education system, especially in engineering and medicine, and a generous pension scheme. It has what by my definition is the best climate in the world, its food hygiene is excellent and its people friendly, cheerful, well-educated and proficient in English.

But corruption, like rust, tends to feed on itself.

The very public case of the organised murder of a journalist will need to be resolved in the High Court.

Bitcoin cannot be allowed to cover all the corruption.

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IT is fascinating to read of how various crooks have been uncovered amongst these corrupt or terrible deeds.

The Pan Am Lockerbie air disaster in 1974 was traced back to a Libyan terrorist through the forensic discovery that he had bought his clothing from a supplier in Malta who identified the perpetrator.

One of the prime crooks in the journalist’s murder was caught by airport customs dogs who are said to have sniffed out currency from a suitcase as he was leaving the country, the currency unrelated to the murder case. 

Closed-circuit television and smart phone technology nailed others in this crime.

Hilariously, a recent capture of drug criminals was made because of their own idiotic error. Drug lords had set off from Sicily in a large launch carrying €750,000 of illegal money. The boy at the wharf in Sicily had forgotten to fill the petrol tanks of the launch. When the boat ran out of fuel offshore a friendly passerby contacted the police to come and rescue the marooned launch.

The drug lords saw the police boat heading their way so threw overboard suitcases of money totalling €750,000. In fact the police were offering a tow. The suitcases washed up on a Sicilian beach. Beachgoers were delighted; money from heaven. The police nailed the drug lords.

 If corruption is to be constrained you need honest police and an honest justice system where cronyism is absent.

Europe and Malta are now and will be under the spotlight.

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NOT through corruption but through piety, British pensioners are now claiming they are being robbed.

A recent industry study has shown that a pensioner who asks for their funds to be invested in Environmental, Social and Governance funds (ESG) would expect to build a lump sum smaller by £50,000 than the fund invested under non-ESG guidelines, over a 30-year period.

Perhaps the timing of the research is important. In recent years the mining and oil production sectors have produced sensational results. Using the trend line established by those rises, the modelling of the 30-year term might be somewhat presumptuous.

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THANK YOU to all readers who have commented on the insightfulness and wisdom of the newsletters written by Edward and James Lee, who have been writing Taking Stock recently.

Going forward, the writing of TS will be shared by the three of us.

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