Police urged to arrest all involved in Rosianne Cutajar fraudulent, ‘phantom’ job

Malta’s ADPD-The Green Party has asked the police to arrest all of those involved in defrauding the state by creating a phantom job for former parliamentary secretary Rosianne Cutajar, one day after a National Audit Office published its damning findings.

Sandra Gauci, chairperson of the party, told the press outside the police headquarters in Floriana that the NAO has done most of the legwork, and she expects the police to start preparing to commence criminal proceedings.

“What is keeping the police from starting proceedings? We expect Angelo Gafa, police commissioner, to take immediate steps to show the law is applied equally to all and that the police enforces the law in all circumstances,” she said.

“It is your duty, Mr Commissioner of Police, to ensure that all members of the police force, yourself included, act appropriately. You should ensure no one obstructs the police officers from acting without fear or favour,” Gauci added.

In April, The Shift revealed a consultancy contract giving Cutajar a salary from the Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS), three months before she told Yorgen Fenech, charged with involvement in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, she had decided to take on the consultancy.

Following the publication of the contract, former ADPD leader Carmel Cacopardo requested an NAO investigation.

The NAO investigated, and in its report, published yesterday, it found Cutajar lied in her income declarations to parliament, failing to mention the consultancy, and cast light on its viability, calling the “backdated” contract “irregular” and “fraudulent”.

In its 50-page report, the NAO also found that almost all possible rules related to recruitment in the public sector were ignored.

Furthermore, the report found no need to create the role of consultant to CEO Pierre Fenech and cast doubt on whether Cutajar actually fulfilled any of her duties.

It noted that “this dearth of evidence casts doubt on what work was carried out,” also noting the “dissonant perspectives” from Fenech during its investigation and former tourism minister Konrad Mizzi and his chief of staff.

Deputy Chairperson of the party, Carmel Cacopardo, explained that the party had asked the auditor general to examine the contract Cutajar entered into with ITS, as the duties in the post were “incompatible with her known competencies.”

Even then, he said, it was known it was a potential case of creating a phantom job to “fraudulently siphon public funds.”

Gauci also noted that this was not the first time a “phantom job” was created in the public sector, noting the criminal proceedings regarding a similar situation for Melvin Theuma, the middleman in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The NAO report clearly stated “concerns of negligence in the disbursement of public funds by all involved in this contrived engagement.”

Earlier this week, a separate investigation into the contract by Standards Commissioner Joseph Azzopardi could not proceed as the one-year prescription for ethics breaches had elapsed.

In reaction, Cutajar claimed the case was now closed.

She said the complaint was “yet another attempt to distance me from my political and Labourite activism,” noting that she “always was and will be a Labourite.”