When you thought you’d heard the end of the tiresome Rosianne Cutajar, up she pops again. Brazen as ever, her sense of entitlement is undiminished, Cutajar came out haranguing her critics. None of the deeply embarrassing revelations has dampened her arrogance. Those shameful WhatsApp messages haven’t tamed her eye-watering impudence. If anything, she’s emboldened, more rabidly audacious.
Cutajar’s claiming she’s been exonerated by the tax department after an investigation into her failure to declare thousands of euros. But she’s refused to publish any communication or conclusions of that investigation. So you’ll have to take her word for it. She’s come out all guns blazing pursuing her revenge. She’s not targeting her enemies in the opposition. She’s attacking ONE.
“I want to express my disappointment about the fact that news that affected me personally and over which I was removed from cabinet in 2021 wasn’t even reported on ONE news bulletins. When I said that those who waged a crusade against me will fall silent, I certainly didn’t have ONE News in mind,” Cutajar provoked.
Cutajar is in a blind fury. She’s determined to cause havoc. She won’t rest until those she blames for her brutal expulsion into the wilderness pay a bitter price.
“This should be good news for the Labour Party,” she continued, “but, perhaps, it’s bad news for those who incited against me and used every excuse to remove me from our party.” Our party? Cutajar still believes Labour is hers and nobody is going to stop her getting back in. She’s intent on mobilising all the support she can to punish those who humiliated her. “Labour diehards like myself would do well to speak up too,” she incited.
Like a blast from the past, 1976 Labour Party deputy leader Joe Brincat duly obliged. Brincat was a deputy leader when Dom Mintoff was prime minister. He’s still upholding Mintoff’s standards. “Rosianne Cutajar did no wrong and broke no law, so why is the party obstinately keeping her out of the parliamentary group,” he argued in his It-Torċa column.
He took Cutajar’s side, lambasting the party for not waiting for the tax investigation conclusion. “Where are those who accused her,” he challenged. “Rosianne Cutajar’s right, everybody’s fallen dumb now.” Her ousting was just all “undue haste”, he insisted. She has the “sacrosanct right to be reinstated as a Labour MP, she was elected by Labour voters and they have every right to have her represent them”. he demanded.
Right on cue, Manuel Cuschieri joined the revolt. In his exquisitely polite, diplomatic style, he publicly threatened Labour’s ONE that he “will take action if, until Friday, they fail to publish her story”. Suitably intimidated, ONE published her story on August 4.
Cuschieri claimed, without evidence, that Cutajar’s tax investigation had been concluded as early as March 2022. “We hope there is nobody in the shadows, and it could be anybody, who’s pulling somebody’s strings so that this woman is denied justice and the investigation’s conclusions remain unpublished. If I get to know the name or names, whoever they are, of those trying to deny her justice I will have the necessary courage to reveal those names,” he threatened at one of Cutajar’s political campaign events.
Cutajar is on a mission to launder her unlaunderable reputation. She’s trying to obliterate the memory of her stinking record and dodgy past. To help her do so she’s recruited two dinosaurs from the filthiest of pasts.
Rosianne Cutajar won’t rest until those she blames for her brutal expulsion into the wilderness pay a bitter price- Kevin Cassar
Cutajar did nothing wrong, Brincat claimed. False. She was found in breach of ethics by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. She was found to have committed serious breaches of the code of conduct. She breached four articles ‒ 2, 7, 8 and 9. She failed to submit her declaration of interests for four consecutive years. She failed to declare her relationship with Yorgen Fenech.
She was found to have acted as a paid advocate and to have used her position to further her own or another person’s interest. She faced a range of sanctions but Robert Abela intervened. He removed her from the Council of Europe just ahead of her disciplinary hearing, sparing the country the disgrace of watching its representative sanctioned for standing up for a man, accused of masterminding the murder of a journalist, who had paid her thousands.
But Cutajar had done far worse. She picked up Joseph Camilleri, the owner of an Mdina property, in her chauffeur-driven car and drove him to a Marsamxett restaurant where he handed her a bag containing €46,000 in cash. That money was the brokerage fee for the sale of Camilleri’s property to Fenech.
Cutajar denied this was for her. But Fenech told her: “I accepted (to pay) the one per cent brokerage fee because I knew they were going to you.”
Cutajar denied any role in the Mdina sale. But she contacted Fenech repeatedly about it.
She claimed “nobody gave me a bag or any cash”. But Fenech gave her a Bulgari bag (in addition to other lavish gifts) and €9,000 in cash.
Somebody gave her a bag, cash and a bag of cash. She failed to declare those thousands in her declaration of assets or her tax return. Her excuse was she wasn’t aware she had to declare gifts. She knew Fenech owned 17 Black. His phone was already being tapped over his suspected involvement in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.
Cutajar solicited cash from Fenech to conduct surveys in her electoral district. She offered to help him rebut allegations that he paid €50,000 cash to damage David Casa’s electoral prospects despite knowing he was 17 Black’s owner.
“I don’t care. I’ll become a consultant with Pierre of ITS and pocket another wage,” she told Fenech, “everybody’s pigging out.” And so she did. She got an ITS contract worth €81,000 “to prepare annual budgets” and “review financial reports” despite knowing nothing about accounts.
At the same time, she was earning €44,000 from her OPM full-time job and another €31,000 for her parliamentary roles. No wonder she’s fighting to get back into that pigsty.
Kevin Cassar is a professor of surgery.