Speaker Anġlu Farrugia will decide later on Tuesday whether to adopt the findings of an ethics probe into MP Rosianne Cutajar, request further investigation, or reject its conclusions outright.
On Tuesday, parliament's standards commitee met for a second time to discuss an investigation that found Cutajar breached the ethics code when she failed to declare a brokers' fee for an Mdina property deal involving Yorgen Fenech.
The probe by Standards Commissioner George Hyzler iwas launched after Times of Malta lreported how Cutajar was allegedly being chased to pay back some €46,000 in cash for her role in the sale.
She maintains she was not involved in the deal, but is the subject of a tax evasion investigation.
On Tuesday morning, a request by the opposition's Karol Aquilina and Theres Comodini Cachia for the report to be adopted and for Cutajar to face sanctions was voted against by government MPs Glenn Bedingfield and Edward Zammit Lewis.
However, Speaker Farrugia, who has a casting vote as chairman, said he would decide on the matter after a recess. The committee will met again at around 4.30pm.
According to the committee’s rulebook, ethics investigations can be adopted, in which case Cutajar could be asked to make an apology or face sanctions to be decided by the committee.
The committee can alternatively reject the findings altogether or it can call for further investigation to be carried out to establish facts.
Rosianne Cutajar (left) denies profiting from a property deal with Yorgen Fenech (right)'Conclusive evidence'
Before calling the recess, Farrugia argued that as chairman of the committee and leader of the house, he needed to be certain that there had indeed been a breach by Cutajar and that she had failed to declare earnings.
The report by Hyzler, the speaker argued, arrived at the probability that there had been a breach. However, the committee has also received correspondence, from Charles Farrugia, known as it-Tikka, a close associate of Cutajar, who claims he had been the one to broker the deal, and was the real recipient of funds.
Opposition members argued that this correspondence merely showed Cutajar was prepared to allow a person close to her to make a false declaration to the authorities.
The claim prompted strong protests from the government members who insisted the facts needed to be established. The report by Hyzler, they said, was not definitive.
During Tuesday’s sitting Hyzler appeared before the committee, picking up from his first round of testimony on Monday evening.
He told the MPs how copies of two WhatsApp chats exhibited by Cutajar, purportedly to prove her innocence, indicated that in fact she did wish to profit from the deal.
'Cutajar expressed wish for payment'
“In the chats with (Yorgen) Fenech, she first says she doesn’t want to take money from Fenech, but this appears to be simply for appearances’ sake. And it cannot be taken as proof of no brokerage. Certainly no one thought they were going to end up being investigated,” he said.
“Cutajar had expressed the wish for payment in some form," he added.
He said that at some stage Fenech was convinced by someone to pay out a 1 per cent brokerage fee.
The Mdina property at the heart of a €3.1 million deal that fell through after Yorgen Fenech was arrested over the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier"Cutajar then says it would have only been fair had she been the one to receive the money, and that she needed it. The result of this is Fenech gave her money which she says she passed on to Farrugia and another €9,000 which she says was a gift, but in the chats themselves contradicts that statement and says that rather than money, he could have simply given her something for her birthday,” Hyzler said.
The commissioner was also asked questions at length about an affidavit drawn by by Labour MP Ian Castaldi Paris on behalf of the property vendor Joe Camilleri.
This affidavit, seen by Times of Malta, includes details of how Cutajar was allegedly handed a bag of cash at a Valletta restaurant for her role in the deal. The commissioner said Castaldi Paris was “evasive” when asked about the sworn declaration, offering little insight.
On his part Bedingfield asked whether he could be certain the affidavit existed since it was torn up by the property vendor and whether it could even be trusted, to which Hyzler said it was corroborated by the vendor.
“It is interesting how it ended up in the hands of a journalist,” Bedingfield said.
Later during Tuesday’s sitting, Hyzler was asked by Bedingfield whether he thought Cutajar could have been dragged into the matter by those seeking to escalate the matter
The commissioner said that the property vendor would talk to Farrugia at length about the deal and that the broker would refer to “us” and “her” whenever they discussed brokerage.
“She wasn’t dragged in at a certain point, she was in the story from the very beginning,” he said.
Zammit lewis asked whether any case had been brought before the courts by the property vendor, to which Hyzler said it had not and that it would have made his position much simpler.