Speaker decides minister made a ‘mistake’ when withholding information on MGA direct orders

Speaker Anġlu Farrugia has ruled that the wrong information submitted to parliament by Economy Minister Silvio Schembri and the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) was ‘not intentional’.

Last week, the Speaker promised to investigate a complaint by MP Ryan Callus following revelations by The Shift that the MGA had not disclosed the correct information to parliament on direct orders issued by the Authority.

The Shift showed how a number of direct orders were left out of the information tabled in parliament. The newsroom had confronted the MGA on this, and the Authority was forced to state it had made ‘a mistake’.

The Speaker has accepted this position as fact, even though the missing invoices were substantial.

In his ruling given on Monday, Farrugia concluded that while it was true that the minister had left out several direct orders from the list he gave to parliament, the information had already been made available through another parliamentary question answered by disgraced former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat more than three years earlier.

Yet the PQ to which the Speaker referred was based on a completely different question to the one made in parliament now – MP Ryan Callus asked for a list of all direct orders given by the MGA between 2013 and 2021, while the PQ quoted by Farrugia and answered by Muscat had referred to consultancy contracts given by the Office of the Prime Minister.

The Speaker has repeatedly come under fire for his failure to sanction government ministers and MPs for breach of rules.

Following The Shift’s revelations, proving with documentary evidence that Minister Schembri and the MGA had hidden information from parliament, further investigations show that there are other direct orders and payments, dished out by the MGA that still did not make it to the latest list given to parliament.

Apart from lucrative direct orders given to labour pollster Vince Marmara, government PR consultant Saviour Balzan, through his newspaper Malta Today, and Veronique Dalli, the energy minister’s sister, The Shift has information regarding direct orders given to former GWU activist Cory Greenland, consultants Beverly Cutajar, Dean Hili, Marita Pace Dimech and lawyer Carl Brincat among others.

The information withheld from parliament also includes thousands in payments given through direct orders to Ernst & Young, PR agency Striped Sox, magazine Temple Concierge owned by accused money launderer Josette Schembri, wife of Keith Schembri, and 360 legal, owned by the sister of Parliamentary Secretary Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi.