Updated 7.15pm with PN statement below.

Rosianne Cutajar remained defiant in the face of an NAO report that on Tuesday concluded her job as an Institute for Tourism Studies consultant was "fraudulent" and "irregular".

Fielding Times of Malta questions outside parliament shortly after the report was released, she described some of the Auditor General's damning conclusions as "not true at all".

Cutajar said she had not yet seen the report and would be able to comment further about it once she did. But she insisted she did nothing wrong and that she worked for "every cent" that was paid to her.

"That's the opinion of the auditor, it doesn't mean it's true, does it?" she said when asked about the report's conclusions. "I did that work. I worked for every cent that I was paid."

The NAO report released on Tuesday afternoon concluded that Cutajar’s 2019 consultancy contract with the ITS was "fraudulent", "irregular" and breached all regulations governing public employment.

It also found she was hired to do work she was not competent to do and that there was very little evidence to suggest she did any work at all.

Cutajar, who is now an independent MP, was hired as an advisor to ITS CEO Pierre Fenech in 2019 and resigned upon her appointment as junior minister in January 2020.  She served as a Labour Party MP at the time.  

'Just because there is no evidence it doesn't mean I didn't work'

The NAO report said the only evidence presented to prove that Cutajar did any work in her almost eight months as a consultant were screenshots of calendar events of two meetings, the fact that she was sent ITS’ organisational chart, and journal entries of four meetings of another ITS official.

But on Tuesday Cutajar refuted that claim, saying it has been four years since she did the job and she had not held on to all the documents from that time.

"I don't think people keep documents from four years ago, if they don't need them today," she rebutted.

"Just because there is no evidence doesn't mean I didn't do any work. I have accounted for the work I did and so did other people."

Cutajar also said she was not considering resigning as an MP.

"I assumed a lot of political responsibility, as you know, so I have no problem bearing responsibility. But in this consultancy I worked for every cent that I was paid," she repeated.

Cutajar was referring to the fact that she was first demoted from cabinet and then eventually kicked out of Labour's parliamentary group following revelations of her dealings with business tycoon Yorgen Fenech, who now stands accused of complicity in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. 

Cutajar took thousands of euro in cash from Fenech to broker a property deal for him and leaked chats between the two sparked the NAO investigation released on Tuesday. 

In those chats, Cutajar told Fenech she intended to become an ITS consultant to "pocket another wage" because "everyone else is pigging out". 

The consultancy contract she signed was dated more than a month before she sent those texts, and the NAO concluded that the ITS deal was backdated “by at least one month”.

But Cutajar refuted the claim outright. 

"It's not true, it's not true at all that it was backdated," she said.

The NAO found that while her contract said she started the job on May 2, other documents revealed that in mid-May and in June, the ITS CEO and the tourism ministry chief of staff were still exchanging drafts of what would be her contract.

Furthermore, her first salary was bumped up by "substantial arrears", the NAO found. 

PN to seek reimbursement of funds handed to Cutajar

In a statement, the Nationalist Party announced late on Tuesday that it would present a motion in parliament demanding that Cutajar reimburse the funds handed to her for her 'phantom job' at the ITS.

Party leader Bernard Grech said in a Facebook post that in a country which believed in rewarding those who worked hard, it was illegal and unacceptable that somebody was paid thousands of euro in taxpayer's money for a phantom job. The situation was even worse when the person concerned was an MP, meant to represent the people. 

The PN said it would move a motion in parliament demanding that Rosianne Cutajar hand back the funds she had undeservedly received.