Robert Abela spends €5,000 a night for hotel during Paris Olympics

The Office of the Prime Minister spent €5,000 per night at one of Paris’s finest five-star hotels for Robert and Lydia Abela’s brief visit to the Olympics last summer.

The cost of the two-night stay at Le Dokhan’s Hotel, located near the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, amounted to €10,811, as reported in the most recent list of direct orders issued by the OPM.

The expense covers only the cost of accommodation for two nights and excludes additional thousands spent on flights, transportation, and hospitality by the prime minister’s entourage.

Education Minister Clifton Grima spent approximately €15,000 for the same event. The Shift reported that Grima, who is also responsible for sports, maintained a low profile during his 10-day visit to evade questions regarding his extended stay in the French capital.

Accompanied by his Chief of Staff, Grima chose a more affordable hotel, Le Relais Saint Honoré, located near the Champs-Élysées, with rooms costing around €800 per night.

The Minister’s visit was so discreet that he did not appear in any photos with Robert Abela during his visit to the Olympic village to meet the Maltese contingent. While it is customary for the Minister responsible for sports to be present at the Olympics, a ten-day stay is considered unusually long.

This was also true for members of the Malta Olympic Committee, as officials stayed well beyond the athletes participating in the games. The costs incurred by the MOC delegation were also covered by public funds.

The latest list of direct orders from the OPM continues to reveal uncontrolled and excessive spending of public funds on friends and affiliates of the Labour administration.

Gareth Degiorgio, the Prime Minister’s photographer, who assisted him during his Labour leadership campaign, was awarded an additional €31,000 contract for filming.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party’s website managers, Weebee (now rebranded as Born Digital Ltd), were awarded multiple new contracts costing tens of thousands of euro, including updates to the Prime Minister’s website.

Despite the Labour Party historically opposing Malta’s EU membership, the OPM managed to spend around €300,000 for a party commemorating 20 years of Malta’s membership.

Notably, many selected contractors for this event are linked to Labour’s electoral campaigns, the latest being the MEP elections campaign, which happened soon after the EU celebrations.

Among the beneficiaries were familiar names, including Bonaci Caterers, which provided food for the party at a cost of €60,000; Elton Zarb, son of former EU sceptic and former GWU Secretary General Tony Zarb, who received €11,000 for music production; TEC Ltd, owned by Carmel Magro, which was paid €12,000 for renting tents; and iCan Ltd, owned by Keith Chetcuti, the CEO of PBS, which received €20,000 for managing the event.