Prime minister orders blackout on information on ministers’ advisors

Prime Minister Robert Abela has ordered ministers and parliamentary secretaries to stop providing information to parliament and the media about who they employ as advisors or consultants on a ‘position of trust’ basis.

The Shift is informed that the prime minister’s decision follows the embarrassing story of Amanda Muscat, the wife of former Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo, who was employed as a consultant to Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri to circumvent the Ministerial Code of Ethics. Muscat never worked at the Gozo Ministry but kept working at her husband’s office.

The story, revealed by The Shift, led to the resignation of Minister Bartolo last year.

In his latest move to restrict public information and prevent further accountability and transparency, Abela has ordered members of his cabinet not to reply to questions asking for lists of advisors employed in ministries. The same order applies to Freedom of Information requests made by the media.

Until the Amanda Muscat incident, ministers provided lists of advisors and consultants when asked in parliament or by the media. This has now stopped, with the government using internal cabinet memos as an excuse to circumvent transparency rules.

The latest anti-transparency measure follows Abela’s decision earlier this year to stop publishing the ministerial declarations of assets, despite it being normal practice for 30 years.

Rampant abuse

The Shift is informed that ministers, including the Office of the Prime Minister, are abusing the system of employing advisors, using government contracts to appease favoured individuals, and putting canvassers on advisory contracts that do not translate into real government work. The move to limit information is intended to avoid further scandals.

The sources said many so-called consultants, including members of private ministerial secretariats and top officials at regulatory authorities, are also being given double or triple consultancy contracts by various ministers, substantially increasing their take-home pay from government coffers.

Within government circles, there is now a standard reference to “kuntratt tal-għaxart elef”, referring to an irregular €10,000 part-time consultancy contract issued by ministers to canvassers and party supporters.

According to established rules, ministers were limited in the number of consultants they employed and restricted from awarding advisory contracts to persons already employed in another ministry or government authority.

Robert Abela secretly amended these rules.

Also, ministers are being allowed to split full-time consultancy posts into part-time contracts to accommodate more friends and acquaintances with advisory contracts.

The Shift has already filed freedom of information requests to all ministries asking for all the contracts of current advisors and consultants.

So far, the requests have been turned down, with each ministry replying with a standard, clearly coordinated reply, that “the request is too vague”.

Until a few years ago, the same ministries had no qualms about supplying these contracts.