A parliamentary committee investigating alleged ethical breaches by MP Rosianne Cutajar will met again this morning, two weeks after Speaker Anġlu Farrugia stormed out of the last meeting without agreeing on a way forward.

The committee’s members disagree on who should be brought to testify and spent much of their last meeting bickering.

Farrugia, who chairs the committee, walked out without setting a date for the next meeting or reaching agreement on who should testify.  The meeting is now being held on Thursday (today) at 8.30am to discuss a way forward.

The bipartisan committee for standards in public life is looking into a report by Standards Commissioner George Hyzler that found multiple cases of probable ethics breaches by the MP after a property deal was first exposed last year.

The speaker decided that,  rather than adopt the report’s findings and sanction the MP, further investigation is needed.

According to the committee’s rulebook, reports by the commissioner can be adopted, rejected or investigated further. Adopting the report would have led to Cutajar either making an apology or facing sanctions.

The government members on the committee proposed they should hear the testimony of Inland Revenue Commissioner Marvin Gaerty.

‘Inconsistent’

The opposition members agreed on condition that the government side committed itself to also summon Cutajar’s associate, Charles Farrugia.

Farrugia was singled out in the Hyzler report for inconsistent testimony.

He has informed the committee that he had regularised his tax position, claiming to have received some €120,000 from the property deal, essentially exonerating Cutajar.

The opposition members on the committee, Karol Aquilina and Therese Comodini Cachia, described the development as tantamount to fraud. 

Government members Glenn Bedingfield and Edward Zammit Lewis insist they only want to hear from the tax commissioner for starters and would not commit to any other witnesses.