Where do you begin dissecting the fraudulent consultancy job given to MP Rosianne Cutajar which has been under scrutiny?
The Institute of Tourism Studies, with the backing of Konrad Mizzi’s Tourism Ministry, gave the MP a fake job that broke all rules and regulations. The contract was backdated. It required Cutajar to do things she is not qualified to do, according to the National Audit Office. There was no evidence of her having done any work. The income was not listed in her parliamentary declaration of assets.
Cutajar was, unsurprisingly, unable to offer a coherent justification for all this.
The MP argued that she does not have any e-mails or documents about her time as an ITS consultant because it happened four years ago. It is an incredible assertion in the age of the internet, coming from an MP who appears to be glued to her phone. She also offered the gem of a defence that “just because there is no evidence, it doesn’t mean I didn’t do any work”. Quite frankly, that is exactly what it means in this context.
Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo did little better when put on the spot about the role ITS chief Pierre Fenech played in the deal.
In his eagerness to defend Fenech, Bartolo threw his own ministry under the bus.
“Pierre Fenech was acting on instructions given to him by the ministry at the time,” Bartolo said.
“I have full faith in him.”
Nothing to see, then.
Perhaps the most worrying thing about the NAO’s findings in this sordid deal is that it might just be the tip of the Right Honourable iceberg. This was the first and only time the NAO looked into a government contract given to an MP, and the investigation was only made possible because chat messages leaked by author Mark Camilleri revealed Cutajar’s true intentions. What about all the other MPs pocketing taxpayer-funded salaries and allowances?
How many of them actually do the work they are paid to do? And how has our political class – both sides of it – allowed this ‘jobs for the boys’ mentality to degenerate to the point of farce?
The PN has thundered that it will present a parliamentary motion demanding that Cutajar repay the roughly €20,000 she fraudulently pocketed from the consultancy. That is all well and good. But is the opposition so convinced that all its MPs on the government payroll are above board?
If both the PN and PL believe their MPs need a bit of financial help to be able to properly fulfil their parliamentary duties, then the answer, surely, cannot be to encourage fraud.
Bernard Grech, to his credit, has been calling for Malta to transition to a system of full-time MPs since the previous legislature. Robert Abela has said he is open to discussing the idea.
Meanwhile, we have entities like the OECD spelling out what everyone aside from our wilfully blind MPs can see: hiring MPs to government jobs and posts is a total non-starter.
If we are to persist with this practice, the very least our legislators could do is funnel some of the money that is spilling out of their pockets towards the NAO, adding to its investigative capacity and allowing it to audit more of these state-sponsored engagements that reek of dodgy dealings.