The Nationalist Party does not exclude taking further action, within and outside parliament, if a report on Rosianne Cutajar's ethical breaches is not adopted by parliament's committee for standards on public life.
PN MPs Karol Aquilina and Therese Comodini Cachia, who sit on the committee, refused to say during a press conference on Friday what this action could include.
The parliamentary committee will meet on Monday to hear Standards Commissioner George Hyzler give details about his investigation into Cutajar.
Hyzler concluded last week that Cutajar should be investigated by the tax department over her alleged involvement in a multi-million euro property deal involving Yorgen Fenech.
Hyzler concluded that the Labour MP and former junior minister most likely received a €46,500 brokerage payment she is alleged to have pocketed through the deal, breaching parliamentary ethical standards when she failed to include that income on her declaration of assets as an MP.
Times of Malta revealed this week that the Inland Revenue Department has been probing the deal since February.
The parliamentary committee that is assessing Hyzler's report is made up of five members: Aquilina and Comodini Cachia for the Opposition, Edward Zammit Lewis and Glenn Bedingfield for the government, and Speaker Anglu Farrugia.
Cutajar's €46,500 brokerage
Hyzler had been asked to look into the matter by independent candidate Arnold Cassola after a Times of Malta report revealed that Cutajar had helped broker the sale of a €3.1 million Mdina property to Fenech.
Cutajar was alleged to have accepted a bag stuffed with some €46,500 in cash as payment – 1.5 per cent of the sale price – with her friend Charles Farrugia, known as it-Tikka, pocketing a further €46,500 in brokerage fees owed by the seller.
The property sale eventually fell through after Fenech was arrested in November 2019 and charged with complicity in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Cutajar denied any wrongdoing at the time but eventually stepped down from her cabinet post pending the investigation.
Prime Minister Robert Abela has since told her that she will remain on the Labour Party backbench, following the report's conclusions.
Rosianne Cutajar and Charles 'it-Tikka' Farrugia: the two are alleged to have pocketed brokerage fees from the property deal.Cutajar's 'four investigations'
The PN MPs said that Cutajar was subject to four investigations – by the Standards Commissioner, the Tax Compliance Unit within the Inland Revenue Department, the police and the Council of Europe’s Committee on Rules of Procedures and Immunity Affairs.
Despite all these investigations, Abela was still shifting the focus away from her and has not yet taken the decisions expected of him to get Malta off the Financial Action Task Force grey list as soon as possible.
They insisted that Prime Minister Robert Abela was being held hostage by Cutajar and questioned what information she had on him and other Labour MPs for no action to be taken against her.
“A week has passed since the Standards Commissioner report, and Prime Minister Robert Abela has once again refused to side with Malta and instead chose to side with Rosianne Cutajar,” Aquilina said.
“What does she know that makes her so untouchable?” he asked.
Comodini Cachia said the Tax Compliance Unit has to decide whether the matter will be tackled administratively or else pass on the case to the police to investigate whether any financial crimes had been committed.
But aside from this, Cutajar herself admitted she was given information by the police through disclosure, which is only given when a person is considered as a suspect and only while being interrogated under caution.
When asked by Times of Malta whether action by the parliamentary committee should first await the conclusions of the other investigations, Comodini Cachia said the country could not afford to wait.