Active ageing minister puts predecessor on the payroll as a person of trust

The Shift Team - 13. February. 2023

Active Ageing Minister Jo-Etienne Caruana, who was elected for the first time last year and immediately given a Cabinet seat, has placed his predecessor Justyne Caruana on the ministry’s payroll on a person of trust basis.

The Shift can report that just a few weeks after she lost her parliamentary seat, former minister and Gozitan MP Justyne Caruana signed a person of trust contract as an advisor to her replacement, Minister Abela.

In an unprecedented move, Caruana, the only minister to have resigned from a Cabinet post twice in the same year, signed her newest contract in June 2022 – just a few weeks after Jo Etienne Abela was made a minister.

Abela had filled Caruana’s parliamentary seat and was voted in by the same constituents who supported Caruana when she was in Parliament.

Caruana’s two other political rivals in her district – Minister Clint Camilleri and Minister Anton Refalo – both were re-elected.

This latest news shows how in the year since her forced resignation, Caruana has been given no less than three different government jobs – in the process earning more now than what she did as a Cabinet minister.

In addition to serving as Minister Abela’s advisor on a 20-hour-a-week contract worth some €23,000 a year, an MP’s salary, Caruana was also recruited on a full-time basis as a legal officer for the Victims Support Agency within the Home Affairs Ministry.

In the same year, Caruana was also awarded a €3,000 a month tender for four years to provide legal services for the Lands Authority, which is under the stewardship of Economy Minister Silvio Schembri.

The Shift is informed that through these three jobs, the former minister is drawing some €100,000 a year from the state coffers.

Caruana had first been forced to resign at the beginning of 2020 after her then-husband, former deputy police commissioner Silvio Valletta, was compromised in the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination investigation, which he was leading, because of his close contacts with the Office of the Prime Minister and alleged mastermind Yorgen Fenech.

Caruana was reinstated as education minister just a few months later by Prime Minister Robert Abela.

But after a Standards Commissioner investigation, Caruana had to step down once again when she was found breaching the code of ethics by giving her boyfriend, footballer Daniel Bogdanovic, a €5,000-a-month contract from the ministry.

The Standards Commissioner had even discovered that both Caruana and her permanent secretary, Frank Fabri, had tried to distract investigations to cover their tracks.

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Thomas

3 years ago

Three govt jobs within a year sounds like a record in regards to people who have a solid ground of good connections to the ‘good will’ from the top.

Every normal employee wouldn’t even get a second chance and be sacked for failing that miserably in her / his job.

Somehow it seems to me, that the PL might just throw all the money around the higher chums of tier one PLers to certainly make sure that the ‘magic money tree’ aka ‘IIP Scheme’ will just ‘dry out’ and there won’t be much left of it when the time comes that the PL won’t be in govt anymore.

Nothing goes below the ten thousand mark, it is as if money has no value and the friends in higher places get higher salaries for not even being that qualified in contrast to those who earn lesser and do all the actual work and thus taking up their responsibility in their job.

Daphne Caruana Galizia not just was right, she is even more proved to still be right every single day because this PL govt is simply proving her right by its own way to run the country and squander govt jobs with high salaries on people who would otherwise probably not know what to do.

The PL as it acts, is its best recruiting sergeant for people with self-esteem to just turn their back on them and not voting for, or even joining them because in the long run, this might become a bad spot on their reputation in a (hopefully not so) distant future.

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Wiston Smith

3 years ago

Three different government jobs, ?100,000 a year, for a government official who abused her position power. She gets roles of person of trust while we get thrusted.

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Out of Curiosity

3 years ago

U ghal Bogdanovic ma hemm xejn? Mhux sewwwa li hallewh barra miskin! Dak is-soltu dejjem ilaqqat xi haga.

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wenzu

3 years ago

THIS is what the MLP is all about- all of the favoured pigs with their snouts deep in the trough. I can’t understand how the electorate can actually vote for these theives.

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Mark

3 years ago

X’taf din il-mara biex qed izzommuha happy? Jew inkella min huma l-kostitwenti taghha biex qed ipaxxuha?

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mrellul

3 years ago

U din kellha l-wicc tghid min huma s-sriep? Are Vera hawn nies ma jafux jisthu!

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John C.

3 years ago

Din taparsi onesta. Waslet bil-hmieg, tnehhiet ghal hmieg li ma setghux jghattu, u ghada tiprattika dak li temmen fih – tilghaba tal-pura u m’ hawnx min hu mahmug daqsha.