‘Super CEO’ raking in €122,000 a year on double government jobs and allowances

Pierre Fenech, the government’s one-of-a-kind CEO on a double salary heading two separate important entities under the tourism ministry, has been raking in over €122,000 a year.

The situation is an unprecedented one created by disgraced former tourism minister Konrad Mizzi and reconfirmed by Prime Minister Robert Abela.

New details show the ‘super CEO’ is benefitting from a double salary as the CEO of both the Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS) and the Mediterranean Conference Centre (MCC). The Shift has previously reported that Fenech is a staunch Labour supporter who until 2013 worked in the hospitality industry, including a position at ic-Caqnu’s irregularly-built Montekristo Estates

Following freedom of information requests filed by The Shift and parliamentary questions tabled by tourism shadow minister Mario de Marco, it now results that while Fenech has been placed on an €83,547 salary at ITS, he is concurrently receiving an additional €38,556 for serving as a part-time CEO for the MCC.

Fenech’s double contracts show that in addition to bringing home two lucrative basic salaries, he is also benefitting from two sets of transport allowances, two communications allowances and two sets of expense allowances.

In total, Fenech, who through his MCC contract does not have any definitive compulsory hours in which he needs to attend to his duties, is raking in over €122,000 a year. His two contracts also allow for additional salary increases of thousands of euros at both institutions next year.

So far, both Fenech and Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo, are refusing to explain how it is humanly possible for one person to properly fill two important CEO positions within the same ministry or whether such an arrangement is normally allowed.

On his part, Fenech is refusing to reply to questions about his work at the entities, or to explain the number of hours he dedicates per week to the management of both entities.

The Shift is informed that Fenech is the only CEO employed to simultaneously manage two separate government entities and, in the process, receive two separate salaries.

From the replies de Marco received in the House, it also results that Fenech had not even the best candidate for the post when an original call was made.

According to the minister, although Fenech had applied for the ITS post in 2014, he had not been selected. But a year later when the former CEO was forced to resign after a scandal, Fenech was recruited as Executive Director and was later kept on as CEO.

Before becoming ITS CEO, Fenech had also been recruited as a part-time CEO for the MCC by the politically appointed chairman Kenneth Spiteri, a former Labour candidate and a friend of Fenech and his wife Romina.

But it doesn’t stop here for the super couple. Pierre is also the chairman of a government company tasked with building a new multi-million-euro ITS campus, which is already delayed by several years. His wife Romina, meanwhile, is a director of the government’s Mediterranean Offshore Bunkering Company Ltd.

Mrs Fenech has no expertise in anything connected to the oil industry, The Shift is informed, and is employed at the Housing Authority where she has been given several promotions in recent last years.