Code of ethics? Active Ageing Minister’s brother given job at Gozo Ministry

The brother of newly elected Active Aging Minister Jo Etienne Abela has been transferred from Gozo Channel to the Gozo Ministry despite no vacancy.

The ministerial code of ethics prohibits Cabinet members from employing family members, but it seems the minister from Gozo, a surgeon by profession, found a way to bypass the rules.

The minister’s brother, Christian Abela, was placed on the payroll of Abela’s fellow cabinet member, Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri.

Christian Abela is not even a public service employee, making such a transfer ‘obscene’, according to ministry insiders.

Sources speaking to The Shift said it is not even clear who is now paying Abela’s salary.  Although Abela is now on the Gozo Ministry’s books, no one really knows what he does. He is rarely present.

“His designation is marked as an authorised officer without any form of responsibility. Permanent Secretary John Borg, who is responsible for the ministry’s administration, is fully aware of the situation.”

Jo Etienne Abela, who ran his electoral campaign on a platform pledging to end Gozo’s rampant nepotism – in a bid to distance himself from Gozitan Ministers Clint Camilleri and Anton Refalo – then followed their path once he was elected.

The first thing he did upon taking his oath of office was to appoint his brother’s wife, Mariella Abela, to his private secretariat.

A facilitator at a government school until the last elections in March, Minister Abela granted his sister-in-law and, indirectly, his brother’s family a contract worth almost €50,000 annually.

Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri has already made a name for himself for favours for colleagues. The Shift revealed how Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo’s girlfriend Amanda Muscat was given a job within the Gozo Ministry’s secretariat to distance their relationship from the position she did actually occupy at the Tourism Minister’s office in Valletta.