Alfred Mifsud will be raking in €63,000 annually as arbiter for financial services

Labour stalwart Alfred Mifsud will make €63,000 annually as the arbiter for financial services following his appointment in April, as Finance Minister Clyde Caruana revealed in answer to a parliamentary question by Opposition MP Jerome Caruana Cilia.

While Caruana declined to answer Cilia directly, he stated that the arbiter’s salary would be equivalent to that of a superior court judge, which currently stands at a basic pay of €62,535 along with €478 in a cash payment, according to the latest legal notice published in January.

Mifsud now occupies the same role in the office that accused him of financial malpractice over 50 times just years earlier. He was appointed to the role just days after his resignation as a non-executive director of Bank of Valletta.

Before his role within BOV between 2020 and 2023 and as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank between 2015 and 2017, Mifsud owned the financial services firm Crystal Finance Ltd, which sold bonds and offered financial advice to private investors.

In the cases amassed by Crystal Finance, the arbiter and courts saw how Mifsud’s company sold ‘junk bonds’ to unsuspecting private investors, many of whom had no experience in the field.

In one such case, the Court of Appeal presided over by Mr Justice Anthony Ellul found it could “not understand how the client, an old woman who couldn’t even read and write, could ever understand all those things [she was being sold].

“For the court, it was obvious that that was not a suitable product for her and her husband, no matter what [investment advisor] Michelle Stanmore and Alfred Mifsud say.”

Apart from employing disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat at Crystal Finance, Mifsud also chaired the Labour Party’s media arm, One Productions, between 1999 and 2001.

Before that, between 1996 and 1998, he was chairman of Mid-Med Bank before it was sold to HSBC.

Mifsud sold off Crystal Finance in 2015.