The prime minister on Wednesday pinned the Rosianne Cutajar consultancy contract scandal on former Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi and said he had taken his political decisions about Cutajar “months” and “years” ago.  

The auditor-general in a report on Tuesday found that Cutajar’s employment in 2019 as a  consultant at the government's Institute of Tourism Studies was "fraudulent", "irregular" and "in breach of all policies and procedures".

The auditor also expressed doubts over the version of events given by ITS CEO Pierre Fenech, and Kevin Borg, Konrad Mizzi's chief of staff at the time, who contradicted each other and could not adequately justify Cutajar's engagement.   

When asked whether Borg and Fenech should face disciplinary action for their involvement in Cutajar’s appointment, Abela said that his past political decisions on the case had been justified by the report. 

“What is apparent in the report is that the CEO was acting under orders and even the head of secretariat of the tourism ministry was acting under certain direction. It is my understanding that decisions about the person who gave that political direction were taken years ago,” he said in a reference to Konrad Mizzi.

Abela was effectively responsible for ousting Mizzi from the Labour Party in 2020, holding a vote that saw the former minister kicked out from the PL parliamentary group after he refused to resign. 

At the time, Abela said that the decision to sack Mizzi was taken because of his ties to the Panama Papers and Yorgen Fenech’s company 17 Black. 

“At the time, there were those who questioned certain difficult decisions I made to preserve both the interests of the government and the Labour Party,” Abela continued. “But maybe today, time is proving why I took those decisions,” Abela said on Wednesday.

Cutajar herself resigned as parliamentary secretary in 2021 following an investigation by the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life into her ethical conduct in a property deal which involved Yorgen Fenech.  She resigned from the Labour parliamentary group last April but stayed on as an MP. 

MPs in the public sector not exempt from doing their job 

Asked whether he condemned Cutajar for taking public funds and failing to provide an adequate service in return, Abela said that he condemned “all MPs” who acted in that way. 

On whether Cutajar's actions merited criminal investigation, he said that while Cutajar has disputed the claim that she did not work adequate hours for the salary that she was paid, if there was a discrepancy between the work she did and her remuneration from public funds, then it was a civil matter. 

However, he stressed that no MP, from either side of the House, was exempt from showing up to their public sector jobs and must diligently fulfil their duties. 

“In the same way that we hear reports about a number of MPs who don’t go to work every day, I insist that especially when it comes to disbursement of public funds, MPs are not exempt from going to work,” he said. 

“Even more than others we should set an example in our public jobs through our behaviour,” Abela added. 

Asked whether he backed the findings of the NAO report in general, Abela said that he had always respected the NAO’s decisions and that he had already acted within his remit on this case. 

“If I didn’t agree with it, I would be contradicting my own decisions,” he said.