Taxpayers splurging €300 a day on Joseph and Michelle Muscat

Disgraced Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his wife Michelle are costing taxpayers just over €300 a day thanks to the extraordinary severance package his successor Robert Abela has agreed the State is to pay him.

According to new information tabled in Parliament following questions tabled by Opposition MP Graham Bencini, taxpayers last year paid a total of €110,000 to finance the Muscats’ various benefits.

That is over and above the €120,000 golden handshake, revealed by The Shift in 2021, that Muscat arranged for himself on the day he was forced out of office.

Like all of his predecessors, Joseph Muscat was given the use of a car, a full-time driver and a full-time personal assistant. But Muscat’s perks outstrip those of other former Prime Ministers.

Abela also agreed on a free car to be provided to Muscat’s wife Michelle, who never held any kind of public role, as well as a State-funded office that Muscat uses exclusively for his private consultancy business and among benefits.

Passing the baton: Prime Minister Robert Abela (right) being anointed by his predecessor Joseph Muscat as he bids farewell.

The taxpayers’ bill for Muscat’s severance package totalled €110,000 last year.

This included €15,000 for the annual lease of his Alfa Romeo, as well as an additional €4,811 for fuel, insurance, licence and maintenance costs.

For Muscat’s wife Michelle, who was not entitled to any severance package, the government last year paid €7,202 as part of the cost of her Land Rover Discovery and an additional €7,363 in fuel and maintenance expenses.

Several thousand euros more in payments included the employment of a full-time driver (€22,359), a full-time personal assistant (€38,404), an office with sea views at Sa Maison (€11,243), the payment of the former Prime Minister’s mobile phone costs (€2,033) and the payment of a phone landline and internet service at Muscat’s Burmarrad home (€729).

The top floor of this public building in Sa Maison is being used by Joseph Muscat for his private business.

Even the cost of Muscat’s personal assistant, former Labour TV reporter Mark Farrugia, is far higher than those of Muscat’s predecessors.

According to established rules, a former Prime Minister’s personal assistant has always been paid at Scale 6 of the government’s salary scales. Farrugia, however, is being paid a Scale 4 salary, the same as a director.

Farrugia had never been employed as a civil servant and was put on the public payroll as soon as Muscat won the 2013 general election.

While Prime Minister Robert Abela has spent the last years digging in his heels to avoid revealing the contents of the unprecedented severance package he approved for Muscat, including refusing The Shift’s freedom of information requests on the matter, he recently began letting out more information about his predecessor.

Abela is currently slipping in public opinion polls and is regarded as being less popular than his predecessor Muscat among Labour voters.

                           

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17 Comments
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carlos
carlos
11 months ago

Two of the fattest pigs which the honest taxpayers are feeding – hallelin ta flus il- poplu. Shame on you.

Greed
Greed
11 months ago
Reply to  carlos

I thought that was glen and EZL?

Eddy
Eddy
11 months ago

PL has to change their name PP, Pigging Party.

Peter Agius
Peter Agius
11 months ago
Reply to  Eddy

And OPM has changed to Office Pure Mafia

Toni
Toni
11 months ago

€600 in monthly fuel for Michelle? WTF, is she showering in petrol? F’kollox iridu jfottu!

Albert Beliard
Albert Beliard
11 months ago
Reply to  Toni

Who is maintaining her garage and doing the oil change for her ‘black’ SUV?

Peter Agius
Peter Agius
11 months ago

And OPM has changed to Office Pure Mafia

Carmelo Borg
11 months ago

Tghid ROSIANNE CUTAJAR ukoll kienet qed tirreferi meta QALET li KULHADD JITHANZER.
CAP CAP GAHAN MEQ MEQ
PACI U SLIEM
HUX HEKK VARIST

Mick
Mick
11 months ago

Where else in the world do criminals such as these two get paid for by the electorate?
Truly Mafialand.

Francis Said
Francis Said
11 months ago

Absolutely disgusting and unacceptable.
But this is the new socialism according to the PL.

Marija
Marija
11 months ago

And who is paying for their full time 24/7, maids at home? Are these paid from taxpayers also or are they so well off that they can afford it?

Sonja
Sonja
11 months ago

Maybe we should all stop paying tax till we are sure tax money is used for common instead of private good!

G. Navarro
G. Navarro
11 months ago
Reply to  Sonja

100% agreed.

Joe l ghasfur
Joe l ghasfur
11 months ago

Hekk sew sur kappillan,ahna nahdmu u nistinkaw u dawn l ipokritti jithanzru min fuqna. Arah lil kumisarju tat taxxa kemm jigi jigri jibghat il multi jekk tonqos jew tibghat thalas tard. Kemm ser nibqghaw boloh.

Bamboccu
Bamboccu
11 months ago

Galadarba taghmel il Botox trid tibqa’ tiehu hsieb u heqq Guzeppi miskin m’ghandux biex ihallas.
Din il mara tfakkarni f’dik li kienet qaltilna it’s not important what you say it’s important what you do…..judge me on my results!!!
Competition bejnithom minn 🐖🐽🐖🐽
l aktar.

Thomas
Thomas
11 months ago

‘Abela is currently slipping in public opinion polls and is regarded as being less popular than his predecessor Muscat among Labour voters’.

I am not surprised at all, because Abela was always supposed to be the ‘substitude’ for Joseph Muscat.

Now with the house of cards crumbling, Abela is the scapegoat to take the blame for and is doomed to watch the swamp of corruption taking its toll. More on him than on Joseph Muscat because he is still the undisputed leader of the PL.

One might wonder whether PM Robert Abela wasn’t aware of what he’s got himself into in the first place. Maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was, but as the saying goes: ‘pride comes before the fall’.

Mjscer
Mjscer
11 months ago

Heqq, making the most of it, hux!

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