MFSA puts an end to Joseph Cuschieri’s extravagant donations after NAO report

All sponsorships and donations dished out by the MFSA have been stopped following the departure of disgraced former CEO Joseph Cuschieri after a report by the National Audit Office stating they went against good governance policies.

When Cuschieri was appointed CEO of the Malta Gaming Authority and then the MFSA, he passed some €200,000 to a Foundation controlled by the wife of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat.

Following an audit by the NAO, in which these unauthorised donations were highlighted, the MFSA stopped all donations.

All “donations and sponsorships were no longer permissible,” according to a new NAO follow-up report issued this week.

The Auditor General’s Office said that following its analysis of the MFSA’s 2022 management accounts, “no donations were traced in the income and expenditure for the period ending 31 December 2022”.

Among the governance issues found while Cuschieri was at the helm of the MFSA, the NAO found that in 2019 the public authority had contributed €88,077 in donations to various beneficiaries, mainly to Muscat’s Marigold Foundation.

Condemning this behaviour, the Auditor General’s Office had said that the financial services regulator must ensure that good governance is always safeguarded when affecting disbursements from public funds.

The MFSA was also ‘reminded’ that the government’s Social Causes Fund “was specifically created for this purpose” and that “the NAO feels that such donations, which should be kept to a minimum, are to be duly regulated”.

Earlier, it transpired that Cuschieri had passed on to Michelle Muscat’s Foundation over €200,000 between 2014 and 2019.

Donations or sponsorships to the tune of €20,000 each time were approved directly by Cuschieri.

The NAO had also found repeated flaws, disregard for procurement rules and abuses by Cuschieri, who signed multi-million-euro contracts without any authorisation and recruited personnel against established rules both at the MGA and the MFSA.

He was forced to resign following revelations that, together with the MFSA’s chief lawyer, Edwina Licari, he had travelled to Las Vegas on a trip financed by Yorgen Fenech, now facing charges over the Daphne Caruana Galiza murder.

Despite his track record, Prime Minister Robert Abela has appointed Cuschieri to serve on the board of Malta Strategic Partnership Projects Ltd, which is responsible for lucrative government privatisation deals. He was also appointed chairman of the Eco-Contribution Appeals Board.