Parliament’s Standards Commissioner has said he is unable to investigate a consultancy deal given to Rosianne Cutajar, as a complaint about it was filed too late according to the law.
Rule of law NGO Repubblika, which filed the complaint, published a copy of the commissioner’s report on Saturday after Cutajar implied on social media that the probe had exonerated her.
The ethics complaint stemmed from revelations that Cutajar, at the time a backbench Labour MP, had obtained a consultancy deal at the Institute of Tourism Studies in 2019.
“Everyone else is pigging out,” she texted Yorgen Fenech about the deal, leaked chats revealed.
Times of Malta subsequently noted that Cutajar had not listed that consultancy income in her declaration of assets for that year, prompting Repubblika to ask Standards Commissioner Joseph Azzopardi to investigate.
What the commissioner found
Azzopardi was able to confirm that Cutajar was hired on a €27,000-a-year consultancy deal by ITS CEO Pierre Fenech in May 2019. She ended that job one day after she was promoted to Junior Minister in January 2020.
However, he was unable to dig further into the matter due to a technicality.
Article 14 (2) of the Act for Standards in Public Life imposes strict prescription periods on the commissioner: complaints must be filed within 30 days of their cause becoming known to the complainant, or within one year of the incident leading to the complaint having occurred.
Given that Cutajar should have filed the consultancy deal in the declaration of assets she filed on April 30, 2020, that one-year period was over, Azzopardi said.
He was therefore legally precluded from investigating the case.
Despite that, the commissioner made it a point to note that he believes that one-year term limit should be extended and that MPs should be barred from accepting paid work from government entities.
Both those recommendations feature in an analysis of the Standards Commissioner’s office conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Azzopardi noted that his report "presents a decision to not investigate any further, and is not a report into the outcome of an investigation."
Cutajar celebrated the outcome on social media. The now-independent MP said that the commissioner "has decided the case is now closed".
She described the report as an attempt to damage her by a group of people determined to "distance me from politics and Labour".
Repubblika reacted by publishing the report in full, and accused Cutajar of "lies."
"Cutajar has once again shown herself to be lower than the lowest of standards expected of MPs," it said. "She again misled, lied and hid behind procedure to attack her critics."
Cutajar was kicked out of Labour's parliamentary group after her chats with Yorgen Fenech were leaked.
At the time, Prime Minister Robert Abela ruled out any possibility of Cutajar running as a Labour candidate again. However, Cutajar has made it clear she would like to be reintegrated into the party and attended its annual general meeting in October.
The Standards Commissioner's stalled probe is one of two investigations requested of Cutajar's ITS arrangement. Last March, then-ADPD leader Carmel Cacopardo had also asked the National Audit Office to investigate the deal. It is not known whether it intends to do so.
Cacopardo suspects Cutajar's consultancy deal was a fictitious deal that saw the MP paid out of taxpayer funds for work she never did.
At the time when Cutajar received the consultancy deal, ITS fell under the political responsibility of Konrad Mizzi.
Correction November 25, 2023: A previous version misstated Pierre Fenech's surname.