Prime minister under pressure to sack two ministers over girlfriend scandal

Prime Minister Robert Abela is facing internal pressure to sack two of his most loyal cabinet ministers, caught in a massive scandal connected to the girlfriend, now wife, of Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo.

Apart from Bartolo, the prime minister’s advisers are also suggesting the sacking of Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri, who allegedly helped Minister Bartolo keep his girlfriend on the public payroll through a fake job for which she wasn’t qualified.

The scandal, exposed by this newsroom in 2022 and confirmed following an investigation by the Standards Commissioner, is expected to rock the government’s credibility further, putting Abela’s diminishing hold on his ministers into question.

While the investigative report by Standards Commissioner Joseph Azzopardi has not been published yet, Labour sources described it as “very damaging to the prime minister, the two ministers involved and the whole Labour government”.

The Shift is informed that Justice Minister Jonathan Attard passed the report on to the prime minister several days ago, and its conclusions are “damning”.

“Abela has a clear and difficult choice to make. Either sack his two ministers or defend them and continue to dent his government’s standing,” a PL senior official told The Shift.

While the government has been postponing the publication of this report for days to avoid overshadowing its budget marketing campaign, it is now expected to be discussed this afternoon by parliament’s Standards in Public Life Committee.

The same committee, headed by Speaker Anglu Farrugia, will decide whether to publish the report.

What has The Shift exposed so far?

On 1 February 2022, The Shift broke the news with an article titled ‘Tourism Minister’s Secretary and Girlfriend Shifted to Gozo Ministry Payroll to Hide Ethics Breach’.

The Shift had been investigating the story for weeks after government sources indicated that what happened to former Education Minister Justyne Caruana was not the only case in Robert Abela’s cabinet.

In December 2021, an investigation found Caruana in breach of ethics after she gave her boyfriend, footballer Daniel Bogdanovic, a job within her secretariat. Caruana was forced to step down after pressure from Robert Abela.

The Shift reported that the Commissioner’s conclusions on Caruana and her resignation immediately raised red flags for ministers Clayton Bartolo and Clint Camilleri, who made a similar arrangement to circumvent ethics rules and avoid following Caruana’s path.

The Shift revealed that while Minister Bartolo and his private secretary, Amanda Muscat, were outed to be in an extramarital relationship following a well-known embarrassing incident inside the minister’s office, Bartolo agreed with his Gozo colleague to shift, on paper, his girlfriend to Camilleri’s payroll in an attempt to avoid the same scandalous situation Caruana faced.

At the time of the transfer, an investigation on Caruana was already in full swing, and the two ministers and the prime minister were well aware of it.

The Shift revealed that despite the transfer on to Minister Camilleri’s books, the minister’s girlfriend continued to work with her boyfriend, whom she recently married, and never really did any work for the Gozo ministry.

Questions sent to Minister Bartolo by The Shift in January 2022 received a terse reply insisting that “Amanda Muscat was not employed at the tourism ministry, the Gozo ministry, or any other government entity, ministry or department.”

However, The Shift already had information from government servers showing that Amanda Muscat was a person of trust at the Gozo ministry while she was still acting as Minister Bartolo’s private secretary.

Other media outlets followed The Shift’s story, while independent candidate Arnold Cassola asked the Standards Commissioner at the time, George Hyzler, to investigate.

Although the prime minister insisted on replacing former standards commissioner George Hyzler with former chief justice and Labour candidate Joe Azzopardi, the investigation continued.

According to the current procedure, once a report is sent to the parliament, it indicates that the individuals involved in the investigation have been found guilty of an ethics breach.

In similar situations, such as the cases of Justyne Caruana and former Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar, Abela was faced with no option but to call for the resignation of those who breached the ethics code.

Both ministers involved in the latest ethics breach are known to be among a handful supporting Abela in his cabinet.