The Auditor-General has been asked to investigate the contract by which the Institute of Tourism Studies engaged Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar as a consultant.

The request was made by Carmel Cacopardo, leader of the ADPD political party after the consultancy was revealed in chats between the MP and Yorgen Fenech.

Cacopardo observed that according to the 2019 contract, published by  ShiftNews, Cutajar was engaged to provide financial administration services to the ITS. Yet she does not have any competence in this area, having qualified to teach Italian.

He asked the Auditor General to establish whether abusive use had been made of public funds through the creation of a fictitious job to satisfy 'Cutajar’s greed'.

Last week, Times of Malta revealed that Cutajar did not list the existence of her €27,000-per-year “extra” job as an ITS consultant in her mandatory financial declarations to parliament for 2019. The NGO Repubblika subsequently asked the Standards Commissioner to investigate Cutajar for that failure. 

The leaked chats between Cutajar and murder suspect Fenech revealed how Cutajar felt entitled to additional income from a government job, seeing that “everyone else is pigging out”.

At the time, ITS fell under the political responsibility of her parliamentary colleague Konrad Mizzi.