The Standards Commissioner has completed an investigation into allegations concerning Labour MP and former minister Michael Farrugia and forwarded his report to the parliamentary standards committee.

"When this happens, this normally means that some wrongdoing on the part of the minister has been identified by the Commissioner for Standards," independent election candidate Arnold Cassola, who made the complaint three years ago, said in a statement. 

He said that although he was the complainant,  the law did not allow him access to the findings and conclusions.

The complaint stemmed from a Times of Malta report that then planning secretary Michael Farrugia ordered the Planning Authority to allow high-rise developments in Mrieħel on the same day a meeting between himself and business magnate Yorgen Fenech was logged in the Castille visitors registry. 

Mrieħel’s late inclusion in the policy paved the way for the Tumas and Gasan groups to build four towers (The Quad) bang in the middle of the locality. 

Cassola had reported Farrugia to the Standards Commissioner for allegedly saying four 'lies'. 

Farrugia, he said, lied to Times of Malta when he initially denied having met Yorgen Fenech at the Auberge de Castille;  

Once he was shown the Castille visitors' register, Farrugia changed his version, saying he had a meeting, but it was not about the projected towers in Mrieħel. 

Cassola said Farrugia also lied when he said that it was an evaluation committee on the public consultation into sites for highrises that took the decision on the high rises in Mrieħel. Nowhere in the public consultation document was Mrieħel proposed as a site for high-rises. 

Farrugia also lied when he claimed he had no access to the committee's documentation. The document was easily accessible, Cassola said.