PBS director breached code of ethics by taking Mediterrane Film Festival job

Pablo Micallef was recruited by direct order for a consultancy role at the Mediterrane Film Festival by the Malta Film Commission, for which he was paid €125 an hour – in violation of the code of ethics of PBS, of which he is a board member.

As a PBS board member and according to the state broadcaster’s code of ethics, its employees and contractors, including Micallef, are precluded from providing services for other ministries or government agencies.

These rules are, however, being openly flouted by various PBS employees. The chairman himself, Mark Sammut, is also serving as the chairman at Malta Air Travel while at the same time receiving direct orders for his private business from the Health Ministry and other government entities.

As for Micallef’s case, he was recruited by Film Commissioner Johann Grech as the official spokesperson for the Mediterrane Film Festival – Grech’s latest glitzy, controversial spending spree.

According to information obtained by The Shift through a freedom of information request, the PBS director was contracted directly and without a call to act as the official spokesperson for the film festival.

The contract, which covered four months, states that Micallef was to front the festival as its spokesperson, with duties including attending meetings with clients and answering questions from the press.

For all this unspecified work, Grech asked Micallef to produce a monthly invoice and to charge the government €125 an hour. No capping on the number of hours per month was included in the contract, and it is not yet known how much Micallef ended up billing the Film Commission.

In another breach of ethics, Micallef is also paid extra to present a daily breakfast show on TVM.

Apart from his paid roles at PBS and the Film Commission, Micallef also receives a generous salary for his full-time job as the Water Services Corporation’s brand manager.

Better known as a TV presenter with Where’s Everybody, Micallef landed several government jobs after the Labour Party returned to power in 2013.

With little to no experience in EU Affairs, Micallef was sent to Brussels as a spokesperson for Malta’s Permanent Representation to the European Union.

After returning to Malta, he was recruited as the communications director at MCAST, where he was lecturing just a few years earlier.

Film Commissioner Johann Grech and Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo refuse to answer questions about the film festival’s total cost, which was said to have been extravagant, totalling millions.