Owen Bonnici spends €140,000 on ‘space policy’ – via direct order

Minister Owen Bonnici, who was responsible for Equality and Innovation before the March elections, spent €140,000 of taxpayers’ money on a national space strategy for Malta – an area that is an unlikely candidate for Malta’s economy due to the island’s lack of experience, expertise or history in the field.

The report, commissioned via direct order, that revealed this information – a document that begins with a declaration that “Malta does not intend to launch any space rockets” soon – was written by KPMG, one of Malta’s largest auditing firms which has no apparent history of any sort of research in the space sector.

So far, KPMG, led on this reporting by its Tax Services Partner Juanita Brockdorff, has already invoiced the government for around €140,000.

According to the draft document, left in consultation stage for months, Malta also set up a Space Task Force, led by Omar Cutajar. 

Cutajar was an employee of the Malta Business Bureau (MBB) – a business lobby between the Malta Chamber of Commerce and Malta Employers Association and the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association – who was hired by Labour in 2013 and given a plum job in Brussels as a research attaché’.

Although the drafting of the island’s space policy has already been underway for more than a year and a half, the final document has not yet been made public, while the Malta Space Task Force website announces that it’s “coming soon”.

Malta’s first contribution to space was in the summer of 2021 when Minister Owen Bonnici attended the launch of Stratos-1 – a space balloon designed to capture aerial pictures of the island.

The balloon’s first launch attempt from Kalkara failed, but it was successfully re-launched later in the evening.