Opinion: Protecting Pierre tal-ITS

Pierre Fenech, better known as ‘Pierre tal-ITS’, after notoriously awarding Rosianne Cutajar her phantom consultancy job, stumbles from one catastrophe to another, shamelessly humiliating the whole government and the country. Yet he manages to retain two CEO posts.

He’s ITS CEO and simultaneously CEO at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, earning over €120,000.

In his latest shameless adventure, he went on a fully paid five-day cruise. He took his wife, his senior manager Andrew Debattista and former Labour Party president Ramona Attard, claiming the cruise was for work purposes.

What’s even more inexplicable is that former Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo covered up for him, refusing to answer the Standards Commissioner’s questions.

Anthony Gatt, the Permanent Secretary for Tourism, made an utter fool of himself trying to convince the Commissioner that Fenech wasn’t enjoying the free five-day Viking cruise holiday with his wife but was actually working. He listed a chat with the chef and pâtissier as proof of this.

What’s more shocking is that although Gatt’s pathetic attempts didn’t fool the Commissioner, he still found nothing wrong.

That’s no surprise.  Former Chief Justice Joseph Azzopardi has gained notoriety for overlooking the most grievous ethics breaches and concocting the most ridiculous excuses for doing so.

On 3 November 2023, the Commissioner wrote to Minister Clayton Bartolo, asking him direct questions about Fenech’s free holiday cruise with his wife and friends. Bartolo completely ignored him.

The Commissioner wrote back to remind him. Eventually, on 25 January 2024, Bartolo sent a two-sentence reply.  In his first sentence, Bartolo claimed that authorisation for Fenech’s cruise had been given by “the civil service” and not by “the politician”. In his second sentence, he exposed his ignorance of his role as minister, saying, “The civil service is not accountable to me”.

Even the Commissioner was appalled at Bartolo’s sheer arrogance and utter ignorance.  The Commissioner wrote back to Bartolo, giving him a lecture on the basics of being a minister: “Your declaration that the civil service is not accountable to you is not consistent with articles 17(5) and 35(4) of the Act on Public Administration (from Chapter 595 of the Laws of Malta)”.

Bartolo spent years as a minister but had no clue who was accountable to him, let alone demand such accountability.

The Commissioner insisted on getting answers.  “Therefore, you are again being requested to declare whether you were personally involved in the approval,” the Commissioner wrote.

He spelt out the questions for Clayton.  “Were you aware of the request for approval from ITS’ CEO before approval? Was the approval given with your consent?”

Bartolo waited until the last minute.  On the day before the deadline, he said: “Once again, I repeat that authorisation/approval was given by the permanent secretary and not by me”.  Bartolo ignored the Commissioner’s questions.  He hid the facts, withholding any supporting evidence or documentation.

The Commissioner was scathing in his report. “This investigation could have been avoided had Minister Bartolo been more comprehensive… Instead, the minister was dry in his replies and based one of his answers on the false premise that “the civil service does not answer to me”.

The Commissioner couldn’t contain his rage.  “If it were so… ministers would just be sitting idle, and the country would be governed by permanent secretaries”.

Now, if there’s one permanent secretary you don’t want the country to be governed by, it’s Anthony Gatt.

Gatt’s testimony before the Commissioner was totally incoherent and shockingly uninformed.  The permanent secretary couldn’t even name the country’s higher education authority, the NCFHE, which regulates ITS.

“The NSEFHE (sic), whatever they are ehmmm, sometimes I don’t get the letters after each other,” he told the Commissioner.

His glaring incompetence wasn’t the most shocking part of his testimony.  It was his desperate attempt to cover up for Pierre Fenech.  He came up with ridiculous excuses.  His most pathetic argument was that the cruise was free and only cost €237 for flights, so why shouldn’t Pierre Fenech accept it?

He argued, “When you go shopping as I did, yesterday, on Sunday I go shopping, you understand, you’ll spend more than that.  And If I have my son running after me, choosing, he chooses from that,  at six years he just chooses wildly, you’ll spend even more”.

When the Commissioner pointed out it was the quid pro quo rather than the money that mattered, that it was the conflict of interest that was important, the permanent secretary declared with a straight face that there was absolutely no conflict of interest.

Gatt’s toughest job was trying to prove that Fenech taking his wife, his senior manager and Ramona Attard with him on a five-day luxury cruise paid by the company was solely for work purposes and of huge benefit to the country.

To justify his outlandish claim, Gatt provided what he called a “report” written by Pierre Fenech detailing the hard work he’d done on that cruise liner.  That report was barely a single A4 page.

Fenech claimed in that report that he met Viking Cruises’ vice-president, the human resources director, the chef and the pâtissier.  He gave no time or date of those meetings and practically no details about those discussions.

The most illuminating information in Fenech’s report is that in his meeting with the “executive patisserie (sic), the focus was on the pastry section”.

This is what we’re paying €120,000 a year for – a man who squanders our money on phantom jobs for Rosianne Cutajar, who takes his wife and friends on a fully-paid luxury cruise claiming it was for work and then gets the permanent secretary to make an utter fool of himself defending him, the minister to deny any responsibility in approving his luxury cruise and the Standards Commissioner, who faced with such abuse, to find no breaches of ethics.

Pierre Fenech can’t even distinguish a pâtissier from a patisserie. Labour must have some good reason for keeping this blunderer in his two jobs.