Inland Revenue Commissioner Marvin Gaerty will be called to testify “as soon as possible” in front of a parliamentary committee investigating alleged ethical breaches by PL MP Rosianne Cutajar.

The proposal by government members of the committee for standards in public life was on Thursday backed by Speaker Anglu Farrugia, blocking the opposition from calling other witnesses, including Cutajar’s associate Charles Farrugia, known as it-Tikka.

The vote came 10 days after the Speaker stormed out of a sitting meant to kick off investigations into claims that Cutajar had received a hefty sum of cash for her part in brokering a multi-million-euro property deal.

The committee is looking into a report by Standards Commissioner George Hyzler that found multiple cases of probable ethics breaches by the MP after the property deal was first exposed by Times of Malta last year.

Earlier this month, Farrugia, who chairs the committee, decided that rather than adopt the report’s findings and move to sanction the MP, further investigation was required to be certain that Cutajar had indeed breached the code of ethics.

On Thursday, he insisted on calling the tax commissioner to testify under oath and then decide on whether to call other witnesses.

But PN MP Therese Comodini Cachia insisted she did not want to rescind her right to call more witnesses. 

“I will vote against the proposal not because I don’t want to call the tax commissioner to the witness stand, but because I will be leaving this room without a guarantee that I will be able to ask other witnesses forward."

Fellow PN MP Karol Aquilina suggested asking both the tax commissioner and Charles Farrugia to testify in the same sitting, but his proposal was turned down.

He then urged for a meeting with the commissioner to be set up by “next week”. 

Glenn Beddingfield and Edward Zammit Lewis voted in favour of calling the tax commissioner to testify.