PM spending €556,000 a year on 10 consultants, in breach of code of ethics

Taxpayers are providing over half a million euros a year for the Prime Minister’s record number of 10 high-earning consultants, who are mostly governing Labour Party political functionaries, The Shift can report.

Making matters worse, the engagement of 10 consultants by Prime Minister Robert Abela is in breach of the code of ethics governing the administration, which stipulates the Office of the Prime Minister is limited to a maximum of eight consultants or advisors.

Research conducted by The Shift also indicates an abuse of state funds when it came to determining the payment levels awarded to Abela’s handpicked consultants.

In most cases, Abela’s recruits were given substantial ‘expertise allowances’ to top up their already fat salaries, making them higher paid than the Prime Minister himself.

While according to the code of ethics, these ‘expertise allowances’ are only to be granted in “exceptional circumstances”, this has apparently become the rule at the OPM, which is splashing out allowances of up to €20,000 a year to some selected few, significantly boosting their take-home pay along the way.

The 10 consultants recruited by Abela since the last election are over and above dozens of ‘persons of trust’ recruited for his private secretariat.

According to cabinet procedures, the Prime Minister is entitled to a 37-member private secretariat staff, from his Head of Secretariat to messengers and drivers.

Who are Abela’s consultants?

The two most highly-paid consultants recruited by the Prime Minister are Aleander Balzan, who until a few months ago was Head of News at the Labour’s Party’s One TV, and a former party spokesman; as well as Ian Borg, a young lawyer who worked as an Abela’s assistant at his private law firm.

The pair are being paid almost €70,000 a year each, with their package including the €20,000 a year ‘expertise allowance’. It is not known what expertise they possess apart from their experience, one as a Labour party reporter and the other as a junior lawyer.

Both were given generic job descriptions and duties, with Balzan assisting the OPM’s communications team while Borg assists with whatever the Prime Minister directs him to do.

In Balzan’s case, he will be assistant to the OPM’s Head of Communications, his former colleague at Labour headquarters Edward Montebello, who, like Balzan, was once the head of Labour’s ONE News.

Underlining his taxpayers’ funds to bolster his personal public profile and communications, Abela also inserted several Labour propagandists as consultants to his communications office, over and above those already forming part of his private secretariat.

Melissa Vella Buhagiar, a former ONE reporter, was given a €56,000 contract to act as a communications policy consultant after having already spent years at the right hand of Mario Cutajar, the former cabinet secretary under disgraced prime minister Joseph Muscat.

Christine Cachia, another former ONE reporter, is also a policy consultant to the communications team where she has been placed on a €45,000 remuneration package while party activist and former spokesman for Minister Aaron Farrugia, Sean Schembri, is being paid €67,000 for consulting on policy implementation.

Oliver Magro, until a short while ago a senior officer at the Planning Authority, is now a policy adviser at the OPM and has been put on a €62,000 salary. Although his contract does not specify his role, OPM sources said Magro is “the man to speak to at the OPM about anything appertaining to the Planning Authority and development permits”.

Magro is acting as an unofficial link between the OPM and the PA and is frequently seen in the company of big developers and businessmen discussing their projects.

Wayne Sammut, the former president of Labour’s student organisation Pulse, and former Labour TV reporters Roberta Apap and Claire Azzopardi, are also acting as OPM consultants.

Robert Abela is also paying former Labour deputy prime minister Louis Grech as his consultant. The 75-year-old, who retired from politics in 2017 and is already receiving two privilege pensions – one as a former MEP and the other as a former minster – is now receiving an additional €60,000 a year as Abela’s consultant.

According to his contract, Grech, who is also entrusted to help in the drawing of the annual budget, is being paid €35 an hour for a maximum of 1,700 hours a year. OPM sources told The Shift that Grech is rarely seen at the OPM.