• Tourism Minister, Gozo Minister breached ethics and misspent funds;
• Bartolo's now-wife Amanda Muscat got €68k job with no experience;
• No evidence Muscat did any work as consultant in Gozo ministry;
• Both ministers blamed her employment on their heads of secretariat;

Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo and Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri abused their power and breached ministerial ethics when Bartolo's now-wife was employed in a job she was not qualified for and did not do, a damning report has found.

Both ministers failed to administer public funds diligently, and Bartolo should not have been motivated by personal gain when the two hired Amanda Muscat as a consultant in each of their ministries.

Retired chief justice Joseph Azzopardi detailed his conclusions in a 40-page report published by parliament’s ethics committee on Thursday.

Azzopardi found Muscat was first promoted from Bartolo’s personal assistant to his consultant with a generously beefed-up salary of almost €62,000 in 2020 and again, with an even higher salary of €68,000, with Camilleri in 2021.

She was chosen without the necessary qualifications or any significant experience in tourism and did not carry out consultancy work.

She largely continued to work as Bartolo's private secretary, but on a much higher, consultant’s pay, even when she was, on paper, employed with Camilleri.

“Muscat was appointed policy consultant with the benefits that come with it arbitrarily, without justification, both because she was not qualified and because she did not fulfil the work that her role entailed,” Azzopardi concluded.

The investigation also found several inconsistencies in the testimonies of Muscat, the ministers and their heads of secretariat and revealed that her email inbox indicated that the Office of the Prime Minister was aware she was still working for Bartolo when she was employed with Camilleri.

Amanda Muscat and Clayton Bartolo developed a relationship when she began working for him and they eventually got married last summer.

The story

The issue was flagged by independent candidate Arnold Cassola who asked the commissioner for standards in public life to investigate a report in The Shift that alleged Muscat was transferred from the Tourism Ministry to the Gozo Ministry for work she did not turn up for.

He asked Azzopardi to investigate whether Bartolo acted with nepotism or favouritism with his “girlfriend”, why Camilleri was allowing his employees to not show up for work, and whether both breached ethics.

The investigation found Muscat served as a person of trust in three roles. After having spent a few months working as a private secretary for Bartolo (who was then parliamentary secretary) in 2020, she was employed as a policy consultant in his Tourism Ministry between November 2020 and April 2021 and then as a consultant with the Gozo Ministry from April to December 2021.

The salary

As a consultant at the Tourism Ministry Muscat had a salary of €39,414, which was generously topped up to €61,888 with several allowances, including an expertise allowance, even though she was not qualified for the role and lacked specific experience in tourism.

Her transfer to the Gozo Ministry got her a sweeter deal. Her salary was raised to €40,183 and ballooned to €67,657 with allowances, which included a raise in her expertise allowance.

The report said that even though she continued to do the job of private secretary, she got a “considerable increase when compared to salary and benefits in her previous role”.

Her transfer to Gozo, which happened when the relationship between her and Bartolo had already developed, occurred five weeks after Cassola had asked the standards commissioner to investigate another contract that then-minister Justyne Caruana had awarded to her partner, Daniel Bogdanovic.

It didn’t matter that she was his girlfriend

The ministerial code of ethics says that “ministers shall not appoint to their private secretariats their spouses or relatives by consanguinity up to the first degree".

But the Commissioner concluded that did not apply to relationships outside marriage, so Bartolo did not breach that particular ethics clause, even if he was already in a relationship with Muscat.

Therefore, he said, he was focusing the investigation on whether her appointment, salary and benefits as a consultant were justified in light of her qualifications and the work she carried out.

But that is where he started to find stumbling blocks.

The commissioner said Muscat’s CV showed she had no qualifications, experience or special expertise in any sector related to tourism to justify her two consultancy contracts.

She holds certificates for A Levels and Intermediates and obtained a diploma in Leadership and Management in 2017, and her previous work experience was always as a secretary or personal assistant at other entities.

Consultants are expected to advise ministers on policy and strategy, the commissioner noted, and this work requires vast experience or specialised studies.

John Grima, who was then Bartolo’s head of secretariat, justified her lack of qualifications by saying he focused more on her abilities, thoughts and ideology when he employed her.

“This would have been more convincing if Grima was able to present tangible evidence of consultancy work. But he provided no such proof,” the commissioner said.

Despite her lack of qualifications and experience, Muscat was given a salary equivalent to scale 3, the report said.

The rules also state that expertise allowances should be granted only in exceptional cases, which the commissioner said is an indication that it is reserved for people who are truly experts in the sector.

But Muscat was given a €15,000 expertise allowance when she was at the Tourism Ministry, which was raised to €20,000 when she was transferred to the Gozo Ministry, the highest amount permissible.

The report said Michael Buhagiar – Clint Camilleri’s head of secretariat – was unable to explain this allowance raise and denied there even was a raise.

The role of policy consultant is a position of trust and therefore depends on the minister’s trust in the appointee, Azzopardi acknowledged, but that does not mean it can be given to an unqualified person.

People who choose appointees for these roles must see they are competent and the chosen ones are obliged to carry out those duties, he added.

Muscat did no consultancy work

Azzopardi could not find evidence that she did any consultancy work with both ministries.

Muscat herself testified that she continued to carry out the work of a private secretary, albeit with some more responsibilities.

This breached the rules, the report said, as policy consultants should carry out consultancy, not secretarial work.

Muscat’s email inbox does not indicate she did any consultancy work, the investigation found. It contained no examples or references to policy or strategic reports, writings or other documented contributions by her.

Muscat also admitted she was not instructed to do research, give advice or prepare reports. Rather, she was often the one requesting research from other professionals.

She was more of a coordinator, she explained to investigators.

“I wouldn’t take the decisions myself, of course. You bring everybody around the table and then the experts decide,” she said.

But Azzopardi said her role as advisor meant she was supposed to be involved in decision-making.

“During this period Muscat continued to work as Minister Clayton Bartolo’s personal assistant, so [Cassola’s] allegation that she was getting a salary for nothing does not hold. But the way her employment was arranged effectively gave her a substantial, unjustified salary raise.”

Transferred to Gozo, stayed with Bartolo

The report noted that Clayton Bartolo, through his lawyer Pawlu Lia, said that his and Muscat’s relationship began after she started working at the Tourism Ministry and that is when they both decided it would be better if she left her role there.

“That would have been appropriate and correct if it were true,” the commissioner commented.

“Instead, Muscat’s employment was transferred to the Gozo Ministry and she continued to factually serve as Minister Bartolo’s personal assistant.”

Muscat and John Grima – who was the Tourism Ministry’s head of secretariat at the time – also gave conflicting testimonies as to how she was transferred to Gozo.

She said it was Grima who approached her and suggested it was better that she was transferred due to the relationship that had developed between her and the minister.

But he said it was her choice to resign. He said that when she handed him her notice he was “startled and disappointed” to see her leave.

She said he told her there were many tourism projects in the pipeline for Gozo as the country would begin to recover from the pandemic, and they offered her the position of trust as they needed someone with knowledge of similar work that had already been carried out in Malta to serve as a “bridge” between initiatives on the two islands.

When asked what work she did for the Gozo Ministry, head of secretariat Michael Buhagiar mentioned the tourism strategy, the diving strategy, a comino trail project, “valuable contribution” in films and the Malta International Fireworks Festival, among others.

When asked what she did, both Muscat and Minister Camilleri added she also worked on preparations for the 2022 scuttling of the ship Haephestus, a tanker that had run aground off Qawra in 2018.

But Buhagiar had very few recollections of that project and indicated it was a Tourism Ministry, not a Gozo Ministry project, the report said.

Emails ‘paint completely different picture’

The commissioner said Muscat’s emails “paint a completely different picture” than that presented in those testimonies.

“The emails show Muscat was actively working for Minister Bartolo throughout the period when she was officially Minister Camilleri’s policy consultant.

“Her engagement at the Gozo Ministry was only nominal and practically all her emails throughout this period are about work at the Tourism Ministry.”

In some emails she was even indicated as the Tourism Ministry’s contact person, the investigation found. 

She was also copied in emails sent to Bartolo and his secretariat staff regarding customer care issues and in correspondence sent to Bartolo from the Office of the Prime Minister.

The commissioner said that the only emails she received that were somewhat related to Gozo appear to have been sent automatically to all employees who somehow had their email address connected to the Gozo Ministry.

Even in the Gozo events she was involved in, she only received correspondence as a representative of the Tourism Ministry. The investigation found no emails that indicate she was involved in any planning of these events on behalf of the Gozo Ministry.

She also did not receive emails from Clint Camilleri or Michael Buhagiar, who were supposed to be her direct superiors.

She also did not send them any emails containing reports or similar documented material with the projects she said she was involved in.

The emails she sent them were only calendar invitations for visits that Clayton Bartolo was planning to do in Gozo.

Buhagiar was also unable to provide documentation showing Muscat’s work at the Gozo Ministry and when asked whether he communicated with her via email, he said: “No, I don’t use email that much. (Le. Bl-email ma tantx nużaħ jiena ngħidlek kif inhi).”

Asked how he was able to verify her work without speaking with her, Buhagiar said he would verify with other persons, and not directly with her. But he would not say who these persons were, saying: “I don’t know by heart, understand me. (Issa bl-amment ma nafx ta, ifhimni).” 

But in her testimony, Muscat said she would receive directions from him and pass on to him reports or minutes about certain projects so that he would discuss them with Minister Camilleri.

“But there is no trace of these documents in her emails, and it is highly improbable she was passing them as physical copies, considering this was during the pandemic – a time when she said she would only go to Gozo on particular occasions,” the report said.

She also told investigators that during the pandemic she would do most of her work from her home in Malta and only go to Gozo when the need arose.

She said she got permission from the Tourism and Gozo heads of secretariat to use an office at the Tourism Ministry to prepare documents, “because of logistics and to avoid wasting a lot of time”.

But the tourism head of secretariat testified she never had an office there. Later, the report said, he said he was not around much at the time because of the pandemic, suggesting that perhaps she did have an office after all, but he did not know about it.

The ministers’ defence

Replying to the allegations, both ministers pinned Muscat’s employment on their heads of secretariat, saying she was engaged directly by them – a fact both heads confirmed.

But the commissioner begged to differ. Being a person of trust generally meant enjoying the trust of the minister himself, not the head of secretariat, so much so, that persons of trust have their employment contracts automatically terminated when the minister is replaced.

“It is inconceivable that a person who is so close to the minister, and whose employment depends directly on his term of service, is not chosen by him or at least with his blessing.”

Moreover, the Public Administration Act empowers only cabinet members to engage persons of trust, including consultants.

Furthermore, both of Muscat’s consultancy contracts empower the minister to assign duties and give instructions, meaning the minister is, indeed, directly involved in overseeing the work of a policy consultant, even though that employee’s direct superior is the head of secretariat.

Camilleri also argued the complaint does not allege that he showed favouritsm with her, but rather, that he was permitting that she does not turn up for work. But that was not on him either, he insisted. It was not his job to oversee employees.

But his own lawyer did him no favours there when, during a hearing in the minister’s presence, he told investigators that the minister “worked with her, knew what she was doing, knew what projects she was working on. He saw the results and would speak to her, and it never resulted there were any issues or that she wasn’t doing her work”.

The commissioner weighed in on that.

“You could argue that a minister shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of his persons of trust if he genuinely wasn’t aware of them,” he said.

“But if the minister defends those actions or even makes statements that do not correspond with the facts, there is no doubt he would be shouldering personal responsibility for what happened, even if he weren’t directly involved in the wrongdoing.”

Further safeguards

Azzopardi also recommended changes to the guidelines for engagement of policy consultants. 

It needs updating, he said, as it allows room for abuse. It has no clear criteria on how policy consultants should be chosen and how their salary and allowances are decided.

The guidelines do not even require their CV to be submitted before they are approved.

Furthermore, permanent secretaries should reserve the right to refuse the engagement of policy consultants and a mechanism must be added that ensures that consultants are, indeed, carrying out their duties.

The standards report was published following a unanimous decision by the committee, which Labour MPs Jonathan Attard, Andy Ellul, speaker Anglu Farrugia and PN MPs Mark Anthony Sammut and Ryan Callus.