Opinion: None of your business

What is it that Robert Abela is so desperate to hide on asset declarations? Why all the financial secretiveness?

According to Abela, it’s none of your business how he earned only €65,000, yet spent €180,000 on land in Xewkija and still managed to stuff tens of thousands of euro more into his bulging bank accounts.

Abela should have tabled those declarations in March last year. He didn’t. He still hasn’t, almost one year later, and clearly has absolutely no intention of doing so. Abela’s resistance to releasing those asset declarations is a strong signal that they contain some bombshell.

March 2024 came and went.  By December, no declarations of assets were tabled in parliament.  The Shift highlighted Robert Abela’s failure to table those declarations –  a first in 18 years. No wonder he is constantly trying to discredit The Shift.

The Shift asked Edward Montebello, Abela’s spokesperson, about those declarations. Montebello didn’t bother replying. Neither did he indicate when Abela intended to submit them.

Abela had good reason to keep those declarations under wraps.  The last declaration he submitted for 2022 showed that despite acquiring a massive tract of land in Xewkija for the price of €180,000, his bank savings increased to €388,568.55.

On top of that he acquired more Malta government stocks worth an additional €20,000.

Abela didn’t even declare his income, simply stating “salary of prime minister”, as his boss, disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat, did before him, which amounts to €65,000.

He tried to hide the acquisition of land in Xewkija by simply listing “property in Xewkija” on his declaration.  The truth was that Abela already possessed a property in Xewkija but separately bought land adjacent to his property.

Abela was challenged to explain how he could afford to spend €180,000 while earning just €65,000 and yet significantly increase his savings and government stocks.  It just didn’t add up – at least not unless he won the lottery or somebody gave him a little present. Abela never explained his amazing financial conjuring trick.

Opposition MP Karol Aquilina picked up on The Shift’s December alert and asked PQ 24591:  “Could the prime minister table a copy of his declaration of assets and those of his ministers and parliamentary secretaries?”

Abela could hardly contain his rage.  He arrogantly replied: “I inform the honourable member that contrary to what was written in the PN statement about this subject, the manual for Cabinet Procedures reads – ‘Within two months of appointment, and no later than March of every year, every minister and Parliamentary secretary should submit their Declaration of Assets to the Cabinet secretary’”.

“The declarations of assets of ministers and parliamentary secretaries for 2023 were submitted as required by the Manual and were available to the public,” Abela added.

Of course, those declarations were not available to the public. The Shift ran a thorough search and those declarations were nowhere to be found.

The Shift asked the prime minister’s spokesperson, Edward Montebello, for a copy of Abela’s declaration. Montebello repeated Abela’s misleading statement: “The declarations of assets have already been made public” – and declined to provide a copy of Abela’s assets declaration.

Meanwhile, Karol Aquilina asked the Speaker for a ruling over Abela’s failure to stick to the established practice of tabling the cabinet’s declaration of assets in parliament.

The Speaker declared that there was no legal obligation for the prime minister to table those declarations.  “The fact that… these asset declarations of the Executive were sometimes tabled in the House does not constitute a basis upon which the Chair can oblige, nor recommend, that they should be tabled.”

Why not? Surely, the Speaker recognises that transparency of our ministers’ financial affairs is mandatory in a democracy? So what’s stopping him from recommending, at least, that the declarations be tabled?  We don’t need to answer that, of course – we know exactly what’s stopping him – his staggering sycophancy.

There was worse. Speaker Anglu Farrugia insisted the declarations of assets handed to the cabinet secretary were available to the public. All the public needed to do was request the cabinet secretary and ask him to usher them to the cabinet office, where they would be allowed to look at those declarations.

The Speaker insisted that he had copies of MPs’ declarations in his office.  And if the public wanted to see them all they had to do was to physically go to Anglu Farrugia’s office and see them in person.

Is that Anglu Farrugia’s and Robert Abela’s idea of making those declarations accessible to the public? Who do they think they’re fooling?

That’s just a mockery of transparency. It’s pure contempt towards the public. Inspecting the declaration of assets of tens of cabinet members in the Speaker’s office is not how documents should be scrutinised.

The public needs financial transparency, especially because the integrity of cabinet members has been repeatedly proven to be suspect. So has the prime minister’s.  His botched attempt to obscure his finances raises even more suspicions among the public.

He’s not only failed to implement any of the 2023 recommendations of the OECD on Malta’s Asset Declaration system but he’s devising new ways of further restricting access to those documents.

Robert Abela’s frantic attempts to keep those declarations secret have earned him continued negative coverage.   But for Abela that’s far better than the scorching heat of another scandal.