Paul Muscat calls for retraction of allegations

Cospicua independent councillor Paul Muscat yesterday called on the authorities to retract the unfounded allegations contained in an auditor's report which had not yet been approved by the council.

Muscat filed a judicial protest in the Civil Court against mayor Joseph Scerri, council secretary John Debono, justice minister Austin Gatt and auditor Joseph Gauci.

He explained that he had sat on the council as independent member for just over a year and had been the mayor on behalf of the Malta Labour Party before that.

Scerri had recently appointed Gauci to look into the administration of the council's finances at the time when he (Muscat) was mayor.

Muscat claimed the report contained a lot of unfounded allegations and claims of fraud when all the council members knew that he had only acted for the good of the council and the people the council represented.

Ironically, the present members of the council, Muscat said, had all formed part of the council when he had been mayor and they had approved all the items for which he was now being criticised.

Muscat denied Gauci's claim, contained in the report, that he had spoken to all council members before drafting his report, saying Gauci had definitely not spoken to him or asked him for information related to his investigation.

He claimed that Gauci seemed to have consulted only the current mayor, the same person who had led a campaign against him when he was mayor which had led to his resignation.

The justice minister had now passed on the bogus report to the police, Muscat said, but the report was only a draft and the final report had not yet been concluded.

Also, the National Audit Office, through auditor Anthony J. Cassar, had approved the council's accounts.

This meant that the finances had been stamped as correct and it was very suspicious of Scerri to decide to commission another auditor to look into the accounts.

It was clear that the decision had been taken to harm his reputation, Muscat said.

Despite the conclusions of the report, the executive secretary, who was by law bound to take care of all financial matters, was not mentioned anywhere and this factor was another clear indication of the reason behind the commissioning of the report.

Muscat said he felt this was just the latest in a series of attacks against him by "those who have an interest and those who are worried about the political reality in Cospicua, which, coupled with the fact that [I] am well-liked in the area, creates fears in the minds of those directly involved ... in the running of the political parties".

Muscat reserved the right to take further action if the allegations in the report were not retracted.

Dr Edward Gatt signed the protest.