Revolving doors: how Konrad Mizzi’s chief of staff was shuffled around to a cosy position

Following disgraced former minister Konrad Mizzi’s unceremonious expulsion from Labour’s parliamentary group in November 2019, his former chief of staff Kevin Borg was shuffled around multiple ministries only days after Mizzi was booted out.

Borg was Mizzi’s right-hand man since at least July 2016, when the latter was given the position of minister within the office of the prime minister. Prior to that year-long stint, he briefly occupied the position of human resources director at Mater Dei Hospital, which also fell within Mizzi’s remit at the time.

Shortly after the 2017 general elections, Mizzi again selected Borg as his chief of staff when appointed minister for tourism, a position he held until January 2020. While serving as Mizzi’s chief of staff, Borg was also made CEO of Yachting Malta Ltd in February 2019.

Yachting Malta Ltd is a public private partnership between the Maltese government and the Royal Malta Yacht Club, and markets itself as an organisation that primarily seeks to “identify and attract high profile yachting events to Malta”, according to its own website.

Borg’s career as one of the government’s highest ranking civil servants was not set to be finished after Mizzi’s departure in November 2019.

After Heritage Minister Jose’ Herrera took Borg under his wing from February to June 2020 as an officer for ‘strategy and implementation’, he was then made the head of the national health screening programme that same year.

Besides heading the screening programme, Borg also lists another job title on his social media account, saying he is a “freelance” head of human resources for the International Institute By Malta, a private computer literacy skills institution.

Borg isn’t the only one to benefit from the Labour administration’s commonly used tactic of shuffling loyalists around, nor is he the only one who benefited from connections made in the public sector.

As multiple reports over the years have shown, even public officials who were caught red-handed engaging in acts of corruption were still nonetheless retained or, at least, allowed to rake in taxpayer money while partially or completely ‘suspended’ – or self-suspended themselves – from their roles.