Disgraced former Attorney General Peter Grech gets a 10% raise

Disgraced former Attorney General Peter Grech has been given nearly a 10% raise in his new justice ministry consultancy contract, The Shift can report following a freedom of information request.

According to Grech’s latest annual contract, the former AG will be seeing his income rise from €62,000 to €68,000 a year.

Grech’s agreement shows that for his first two annual contracts covering 2021 and 2022, he was paid €35 an hour for his services. The rate has been revised upward to €40 an hour in a new contract that entered into force in February.

The 66-year-old also receives a full pension as a former AG and is still lecturing at the University of Malta.

Despite his severely dented reputation,  because of his well-known inaction and buckling to pressure when it came to the crime and corruption that characterised the Joseph Muscat administration’s higher echelons, the contract leaves Grech in a position “to represent” the justice ministry, and hence the government.

Grech’s contract does not stipulate any particular assignment or any place from where he is meant to provide his services. Grech works on the instructions of the Justice Ministry’s Permanent Secretary Johan Galea, who signed the latest contract. Galea receives his orders straight from Justice Minister Jonathan Attard.

Grech is regarded in the legal community as having been one of the weakest Attorney Generals to have occupied the position.

Appointed by a Nationalist administration in 2010, Grech was kept in place by Joseph Muscat and was exposed on several occasions for his lack of action in the face of national scandals.

In 2016, when the Panama Papers were published with evidence showing the financial machinations of former energy minister Konrad Mizzi, OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri and another “VIP” who opened Egrant Inc, Grech refused to take action.

He instead instructed the police to go slow on any related investigation. He had also advised against the seizure of the servers of Nexia BT, Brian Tonna’s accounting firm that set up the Panamanian and New Zealand financial structures.

At the time, Grech had also been the chairman of the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, which had failed to tangibly act on rampant money laundering, which earned Malta its Financial Action Task Force grey-listing.

Grech had been placed back on the public payroll only two weeks after his resignation in September 2020. Then justice minister Zammit Lewis, who is also related to Grech, had first placed him on a three-month ‘transitional contract’ at €7,000 a month. That contract was later converted into an annual one and was reconfirmed, with a raise, by Prime Minister Robert Abela.