‘A big step back for Malta’ and a giant leap for government evasion

Even the Standards Commissioner has completely lost his patience with Robert Abela’s deviousness, lies and secrecy. Commissioner Joseph Azzopardi abandoned his vague legalistic language and is talking straight.

In his latest report, he lambasted Prime Minister Robert Abela, denouncing his dodging and weaving over the ministerial declaration of assets as “a substantial step backwards in transparency”.

We’re in mid-2025, yet Robert Abela’s assets declaration for 2023 remains shrouded in secrecy. Nobody has seen it.

Until recently, not even the Standards Commissioner, who has the legal responsibility of verifying Abela’s assets declaration, had.

The Commissioner was reduced to begging Abela and his cabinet secretary, Ryan Spagnol, to give him a copy so he could do his job.

For months Abela has been defying established practice, the general public, media requests, Freedom of Information requests, GRECO, the OSCE, the Malta Chamber, the Information and Data Protection Commissioner,  and the Standards Commissioner by obstinately concealing his declaration of assets.

Yet he shamelessly told parliament on 20 January that it was “available to the public”.  This was an outrageous lie.  The media had been clamouring for months for the assets declarations of the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues to be tabled in parliament, as they had been for years.

Abela knew full well those declarations were not “available to the public”.  In fact, he declared he was under no obligation to table those declarations in parliament. He insisted his colleagues were only obliged to submit them to the cabinet secretary, his friend Ryan Spagnol, and only Abela himself could see them.

The man is a bare-faced cheat – one minute he’s telling us those declarations are “available to the public”, the next he’s insisting they’re for his eyes only.

The Standards Commissioner found out the hard way which of Abela’s two diametrically opposite versions was correct. He was led into a game of cat-and-mouse with the prime minister and his cabinet secretary, demanding access to those declarations and repeatedly being rebuffed with more of Abela’s nonsense.

In December 2024, Commissioner Joe Azzopardi wrote to Spagnol, pointing out that the asset declarations Abela claimed were “available to the public” were not accessible. He asked him whether they had been tabled in parliament, and if not, why the delay, and when would they be tabled?

Insolently, Spagnol retorted that those declarations were submitted to him on time, but “I am not aware of any further obligation on me arising from any law, code or manual”. He conveniently ignored the commissioner’s key question – when would they be tabled?

The commissioner wrote directly to Robert Abela, pointing out that GRECO had made it clear that those “declarations should be made more easily and systematically accessible”. Abela dug in his heels, telling parliament on 20 January that he was under no obligation to table them.

When PN MP Karol Aquilina asked for a ruling, Speaker Anglu Farrugia took the prime minister’s side, insisting Abela wasn’t obliged to table his declarations.

Just days later, Abela defiantly wrote back to the Standards Commissioner, slapping the compliant speaker’s ruling in the commissioner’s face, adding that public accessibility would be satisfied by a request to the cabinet secretary.

Abela was bluffing.  The Shift had already requested copies of those asset declarations from the Office of the Prime Minister. Those requests were completely ignored.

The Times of Malta’s Freedom of Information request was blocked by the prime minister.  When The Shift lodged its own FOI request, the OPM rejected it too.

When The Shift challenged the decision, the Data Commissioner issued an enforcement notice ordering the Office of the Prime Minister to publish those declarations immediately. Abela refused, claiming they were confidential documents “exempt from publication”.

The Commissioner wrote back to Abela, insisting that “ministers’ declarations of assets for 2023 should be tabled… there should be no reduction in the information ministers are obliged to provide”.

He pointed out to the prime minister that Article 13(1)a of the Act obliged the Commissioner to examine those declarations and that the refusal to provide them was tantamount to obstructing the legal functions of his office.

The commissioner said that “by the date of the referred correspondence, this office still had not been granted access to or given copies of the asset declarations… a formal request for the same declarations was again necessary”.

Finally, on 12 March, the commissioner was given copies of Abela’s asset declarations. You would think the commissioner could now sit down, examine and verify them.  Wrong.

To do so, the commissioner needs access to Abela’s and his ministers’ tax returns. And guess what?  The Standards Commissioner has no access to the tax declarations submitted to the Speaker.  There’s no way he could effectively scrutinise the scribbles on those declarations without tax returns.

The commissioner, clearly exasperated, let rip. He called the assets declaration system “deficient”.

He complained the system was riddled with “confusion and a lack of systematic transparency”.

“Ministers and parliamentary secretaries should submit one declaration of assets and this (should) be public, detailed and accessible,” his report stated.  He went further, recommending that declarations be verified independently by an authority with access to tax records and land registries. Dream on.

Abela has too much to hide. His 2021 and 2022 declarations of assets had already revealed a staggering level of dishonesty.

Abela hid the fact that he had bought a 500-square-metre tract of land for €180,000 next to his Xewkija property by claiming it was “the same property.”

Since then, he’s acquired another 842 square metres of land for €135,000.  Despite buying €180,000 of land and only earning €68,000, Abela added another €32,000 in savings and government stocks to his bulging €388,568 bank accounts.

The numbers just don’t add up. And that’s without factoring in the additional land acquired, his luxury yacht expenses and the huge cost of developing both his Xewkija property and the one in Żejtun.

No wonder Abela is so desperate to conceal his 2023 assets declaration.  By now, he should have released his 2024 declaration, too. But how can he?

Meanwhile, on planet fiction, the Labour Party’s ONE News reported “The Standards Commissioner confirms that the ministerial asset declarations were submitted”.