Robert Abela will not say whether minister Clayton Bartolo should be made to refund extra money his wife received for a job she did not do, saying on Friday that he did not want to influence Standards committee members' decision. 

“I want to let the committee fulfil its function, and I don't want to... influence the government members of that committee,” the prime minister said on Friday.

But Abela also said that "everyone understands what the popular sentiment is" about the ongoing scandal and that the government's two committee members, Jonathan Attard and Andy Ellul, “have a clear line of thought” about how to handle it.

On Thursday, parliament’s Standards Committee endorsed a report which found that Tourism Minister Bartolo and Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri abused their power when they promoted Bartolo’s then-girlfriend Amanda Muscat to consultancy roles she was unqualified for and did not do.

Muscat, who was originally Bartolo's secretary, was first made a consultant within his ministry with a salary of almost €62,000 in 2020.

She was then moved to Camilleri's Gozo Ministry and given an even higher salary of €68,000.

But in practice, Muscat continued to work as Bartolo’s private secretary while earning a consultant's salary, Standards Commissioner Joseph Azzopardi reported.

The Commission will discuss what sanction to give the two ministers on Wednesday. Bartolo and Camilleri have until that day to write to the committee to explain their position.

Independent candidate Arnold Cassola has challenged the two ministers to make those submissions in person before the committee. 

Speaking on Friday morning, Abela sought to refocus attention on the Nationalist Party's response to the ongoing scandal. 

The PN was hypocritical, he said, because it allowed much worse scandals under its watch. 

It was a PL government that created the standards commissioner post, he noted.

“If the PL never introduced this law, episodes like the one we are discussing would not have been scrutinized,” he said.

He said European Parliament president Roberta Metsola appointing her brother-in-law Matthew Tabone as her head of cabinet was an example of “blatant nepotism.”

He also pointed out a complaint sent to the Standards Commissioner concerning Toni Bezzina and four other PN MPs for not reporting to their government jobs. 

Tabone worked for Metsola for several years before he married her sister. Bezzina has denied Labour allegations about him not reporting for work. 

Repubblika criminal complaint on Glenn Micallef ‘disgusting’

Abela also lashed out at Repubblika, a rule of law NGO that he described as the PN's "most extreme faction", for having requested a criminal probe into his former chief of staff Glenn Micallef.

Repubblika allege that Micallef, who is days away from being formally appointed an EU commissioner, enabled Amanda Muscat to defraud the public and embezzle public money by formally approving her transfer to the Gozo ministry.  

Abela said the "disgusting" criminal complaint by Repubblike and its lawyer Jason Azzopardi were an attempt to stop him from becoming European Commissioner.

Abela said the “PN’s most extremist faction” was using criminal procedures to stop Micallef from becoming commissioner after his “very strong performance” in his grilling in front of the European Parliament’s CULT committee.