“If there were any shortcomings from my end I apologise,” Clayton Bartolo said. And if you haven’t yet fallen over in tears of laughter, he added, “No one is perfect in this world”. These people have absolutely no shame.
That wasn’t an apology. It was a desperate plea to save his skin. Bartolo shouldn’t be issuing statements as a minister. In any decent democracy, he’d long have been sent packing.
And after his crocodile tears, he let slip his true motivation for making that forced non-apology: “As I’ve done in the past years serving this (ministerial) role, I will continue focusing on my work within the tourism industry.” That is exactly the point. Bartolo hasn’t been focusing on his work. He’s been focusing on how to enrich his former girlfriend and now his wife out of our money.
The standards commissioner’s damning report leaves no room for manoeuvre.
Bartolo should stop issuing statements and call his lawyers. This isn’t an issue of some “mistakes”. This is criminal. What the standards commissioner documented is criminal behaviour by two cabinet ministers.
The two ministers abused their power to gift Bartolo’s girlfriend, who had practically no qualifications except some intermediate- and advanced-level certificates, tens of thousands of taxpayers’ money. She was appointed a consultant when previously she was a clerk at the Central Bank. The commissioner categorically declared she did not have the qualifications or the experience and moreover didn’t carry out any consultancy. She couldn’t even if she tried.
The two ministers didn’t just ratchet up her salary. They also gave her tens of thousands of euros more in expertise allowance, of which she had none.
But the sheer abuse of public funds wasn’t the worst. Bartolo and Clint Camilleri colluded to cover-up the fact that Bartolo’s girlfriend was working in his ministry. They lied repeatedly that she was employed at the Gozo ministry when she never worked there.
Camilleri, through his lawyers, lied blatantly claiming she worked at his ministry on various projects. He claimed falsely that he “worked with her, knew what she was doing, knew what projects she was working on. He saw the results and would speak to her, and it never resulted there were any issues or that she wasn’t doing her work.”
Bartolo lied that he was not involved in the recruitment of his girlfriend as a consultant on a basis of trust. He lied through his lawyer Pawlu Lia that his relationship with Amanda Muscat began after she started working at the tourism ministry and that’s when they decided it would be better if she left her role. The commissioner commented “that would have been appropriate and correct if it were true”.
The commissioner pointed out that Bartolo’s girlfriend was only nominally transferred to Gozo but “continued to factually serve as Minister Bartolo’s personal assistant”.
Even more alarming is that the two ministers, who are wholly responsible for the fraud and the perjury, also drew in their respective heads of secretariats into the criminal scheme. John Grima, who was then Bartolo’s head of secretariat, gave conflicting testimony as to how she was transferred to Gozo. Muscat claimed it was Grima who approached her and suggested she should be “transferred” to Gozo. Grima on the other hand claimed it was her idea and that he was “startled and disappointed” to see her leave.
Ministers Clint Camilleri and Clayton Bartolo should be sacked and made to face criminal prosecution- Kevin Cassar
Michael Buhagiar, Gozo ministry head of secretariat, also lied through his teeth. When asked what consultancy work Bartolo’s girlfriend did in Gozo he listed a whole litany of strategies – the tourism strategy, the diving strategy, the Comino Trail project, “valuable contribution” in films and the Malta International Fireworks Festival.
However, when the commissioner trawled through her small e-mail box, he found no reference to any policies. She had not sent or received any e-mails at all from the Gozo minister or his head of secretariat. She was the “tourism ministry’s contact”. Even more damning, the Office of the Prime Minister knew that Muscat wasn’t working at the Gozo ministry. She was copied in to correspondence regarding customer care issues relating to the tourism ministry by OPM.
Camilleri’s head of secretariat was unable to provide any documentation whatsoever indicating that Muscat had done any work for the Gozo ministry.
When confronted about the lack of e-mail communication between him and Muscat he replied “No, I don’t use e-mail that much” (Le. Bl-email ma tantx nużaħ jien ngħidlek kif inhi).
When asked how he confirmed she was doing her work without even speaking to her, Buhagiar claimed he would verify through third persons and not directly with her. But when asked who these persons were, he replied, “Now off the top of my head I don’t know, understand me” (Issa bl-amment ma nafx ta, ifhimni).
Both heads of secretariat should not only be sacked instantly but should face criminal procedures, not least for perjury and perversion of the course of justice.
This is a repeat of the Justyne Caruana-Danjel Bogdanovic case – except it’s multiple times worse. Bogdanovic only got €15,000. Only Frank Fabri was dragged into the minister’s lies and machinations.
With Muscat, we have two ministers who conspired not only to award her eye-watering sums of money way beyond her competence or abilities, but also worked assiduously to deceive the public by constructing a fictitious story that she had been transferred to the Gozo ministry when she was still Bartolo’s private secretary on a massively inflated salary.
When they were caught, they lied repeatedly under oath to pervert the course of justice and to deceive the standards commissioner. They also recruited their respective heads of secretariat to lie on their behalf under oath to hide their fraudulent misappropriation of public funds.
Justyne Caruana was fired for her flagrant abuse. Clint Camilleri and Clayton Bartolo cannot be treated differently for doing far worse. They have both been proven dishonest, greedy, corrupt, and untrustworthy. Bartolo and Camilleri don’t belong in cabinet – they should be facing criminal prosecution and a deserved lengthy sentence.
Kevin Cassar is a professor of surgery.