Updated 12.40pm

Clayton Bartolo resigned as Tourism Minister and as a Labour MP on Tuesday, weeks after a Standards Commissioner report concluded that he abused his ministerial power by giving his wife a top-paid consultancy job she did not do.

Prime Minister Robert Abela said he spoke to Bartolo, 37, on Monday evening and again on Tuesday morning, when that decision was confirmed.

He said the decision was taken in light of a second scandal that emerged concerning Bartolo and which Times of Malta asked questions about some days ago. 

Times of Malta exclusively revealed on Tuesday that the police have received a report into suspicious payments that Bartolo’s wife received over a six-month period in 2023.

Those payments, which totalled around €50,000, were made from a company linked to a Malta Tourism Authority contractor. Investigators at the FIAU, Malta’s anti-money laundering body, suspect the payments were a kickback for the contractor getting MTA work.

A Tourism Ministry spokesperson denied any link between the two. 

Bartolo to serve as independent MP

The prime minister said Bartolo would remain in parliament as an independent MP and that he and his wife, Amanda Muscat, would also be refunding excess payments she received for being falsely listed and paid as a consultant. 

Bartolo would now be in a better position to defend himself, Abela said. 

A former Mellieħa councillor and deputy mayor, Bartolo was first elected to parliament in 2017 and appointed junior minister for financial services in January 2020, when Robert Abela assumed office as prime minister.

In November that year he was promoted to full minister, taking over the tourism brief.

As tourism minister, Bartolo oversaw a record post-pandemic recovery in tourist arrivals but also various controversies over excessive – and skewed – spending by entities under his watch, most notably the Malta Tourism Authority and Malta Film Commission.

The job scandal

Bartolo found himself in the eye of a political storm last month when parliament's standards commissioner concluded that he and fellow minister Clint Camilleri abused their power by making Bartolo's wife (then girlfriend) Muscat a ministry consultant. Muscat was his secretary at the time.

In March 2021, she was transferred to Camilleri’s Gozo Ministry and given a pay bump, shifting her salary up to €68,000 a year.

But in reality, Muscat continued to work as Bartolo’s secretary throughout, while earning a consultant’s salary – including a €20,000-a-year “expertise allowance” that regulations state should only be given in “exceptional circumstances”.

The Standards Commissioner found no evidence that Muscat – whose sole qualifications were a couple of A levels and whose previous job experience focused on secretarial work – did any consultancy work for either ministry.

Bartolo initially insisted offered a conditional apology for the breach, saying “no one is perfect”  and saying calls for him to resign were based on “political spin”.

But anger about the scandal showed no sign of abating and fresh calls for him to resign were still being made as recently as Monday, when multiple University of Malta student organisations said he had to go.

The other minister involved

Bartolo is just one of two ministers embroiled in the scandal. Clint Camilleri, the Gozo Minister who fictitiously employed Muscat for most of 2021, was also found guilty of abusing his ministerial power.

Camilleri has insisted he did nothing wrong and followed all rules and procedures throughout. 

In written submissions to the Standards Commissioner, Camilleri insisted Muscat was selected by his ministry's permanent secretary, not himself. 

The Commissioner found that hard to believe, noting that persons of trust (as Muscat was) must resign when a minister is changed and saying it was "inconceivable" that such a person is selected without the minister's blessing.

One of the commissioner's conclusions about Clint Camilleri's role in the scandal.

Camilleri's lawyer also told the commissioner that the minister knew what Muscat was working on and never had any issues with the quality of her work as a consultant - work there is no evidence Muscat did. 

"One can debate if a minister should be held responsible for the actions of their persons of trust," the Standards Commissioner concluded. "But if a minister defends those actions and to do so even makes statements that are not factual, there is no doubt he is assuming personal responsibility for those events," he said of Camilleri.  

I’m being used to attack the government - Bartolo 

In a statement that did not address the reasons behind his resignation, Bartolo said that he had decided to step down as his position was being used to harm the government’s reputation. 

“When I was appointed to cabinet I had given my word that if during my tenure I became a reason to attack the work of the government or the Labour Party, I would take political responsibility,” he said. 

He said that he was proud to leave behind a tourism industry that is now built on solid foundations and said that under his political direction, the country’s film industry had performed excellently on an international level.

More to follow