Michelle throws Joyce under the bus

Joyce Cassar is the Permanent Secretary at The Office of the Prime Minister’s People and Standards Division.

A damning Standards Commissioner report revealed how Cassar broke the rules to give Michelle Muscat’s NGOs preferential treatment at the cost of the taxpayer. Cassar attempted to mislead the Commissioner by withholding information and giving false information to cover up her abuse. She was caught lying and repeatedly contradicting her own testimony.

The Commissioner challenged her false claims. Instead of doing her duty and protecting the interests of the taxpayer and the public service, Cassar transferred civil servants to Michelle Muscat’s NGOs against the explicit wishes of senior civil servants and treated Michelle Muscat’s demands with inexplicable urgency.

Cassar deviously evaded questions, gave foggy answers, and even lied to the Commissioner to cover up for Michelle Muscat and for whoever was putting “inappropriate pressure” on her. The Commissioner had to call her back to explain what he called “anomalies” in her testimony.

The Commissioner lamented that “as a Permanent Secretary, Joyce Cassar does not fall under the Standards in Public Life Act” and therefore, couldn’t penalise her. Joyce Cassar destroyed her reputation and exposed herself to potential prosecution.

If this were a normal country, she would be suspended and investigated for giving false testimony under oath. The Principal Permanent Secretary would have immediately summoned her and put her out on garden leave.

The Police Commissioner and the AG would be scrutinising her sworn evidence and charging her with perjury. Instead, the Commissioner’s latest report is met with the same silence and inaction we’ve all become used to. Senior civil servants keep being protected as long as their despicable actions serve to shield an untouchable core of Labour insiders.

When Joyce Cassar was first summoned before the Commissioner she claimed her division didn’t release civil servants on salary scale above 6. Yet Cassar released Natasha Deguara who was on salary scale 5 to work with Michelle Muscat “without any objection”.

Later on, Cassar changed her version. She told the Commissioner that civil servants on higher pay scales could be released but “I tell the entity this person is coming on scale 6 and you have to pay the difference”.

Yet in March 2025, Cassar’s Division approved Deguara’s payment – in full breach of civil service rules. To add insult to injury, that irregular approval was backdated to November 2024. And the taxpayer bore the costs.

When Cassar was called back to testify, she changed her version once more. She falsely claimed that “even employees on salary scale 5 can be released…now we’re saying, therefore ad hoc, that sometimes we allow (those on salary scale) five, and Natasha (Deguara) isn’t the only one”.

The Commissioner quoted verbatim the rule Cassar had broken: “Officers on a salary scale higher than Scale 6….will be paid the maximum of Scale 6”.

“This rule is mandatory and does not allow any exceptions,” the Commissioner emphasised.

Yet Cassar did make exceptions to please Michelle Muscat. Cassar broke the rules, intentionally, and then attempted to cover up her breach by lying to the Commissioner.

To try and patch up, on 15 July 2025, the day after she testified before the Commissioner, Cassar wrote to the Marigold Foundation asking for justification why Deguara should receive her full salary in order to hide her own breach of civil service rules.

Cassar was forced to admit that there are more people being paid irregularly above salary scale 6 while seconded to NGOs. “If this is the case,” the Commissioner commented, “this means others are being given preferential treatment too. The public administration should not break its own rules.”

That’s exactly what Joyce Cassar was doing; at our expense.

Cassar first told the Commissioner that Michelle’s Marigold Foundation as well as her National Alliance for Rare Diseases both merited additional civil servants. But later she was forced to admit her Division made no checks and simply accepted the NGO’s claims.

When the Commissioner pointed out that two civil servants released to Michelle’s two NGOs were effectively job sharing and only working on a day-in day-out rota, Cassar simply replied “I would have released them but the NGO takes full responsibility.”

She’s very much mistaken. Michelle Muscat won’t take any resopnsibility. Her two NGOs issued a public statement explicitly contradicting Cassar. They insisted that “the Standards Commissioner found no wrongdoing on their end.”

The wrongdoing is all Joyce Cassar’s.

Cassar should have set up specific signed agreements with Michelle’s NGOs when she acceded to releasing more than one civil servant with each NGO. She didn’t.

One agreement was signed three years late, another twenty months late. First, Cassar claimed she couldn’t remember why those agreements hadn’t been signed.

Then, she insisted the delay was because the release was not approved by her division. This was an outright lie.

Exhibited documents from her own division revealed those releases in 2017 and 2018 were approved by her Division. Even worse, Cassar herself was warned in 2018 by one of her own officials that an agreement needed to be drawn up. She ignored the advice.

Cassar proceeded to personally approve the secondment of Mrs Anna Mangion to Michelle’s NGO “with the strength of a simple note”, breaking civil service rules.

Cassar also released civil servants to Michelle’s NGOs against the explicit protestations of their superiors. When she was challenged over why Anna Mangion, a VAT official, was still released despite no replacement being found and against the orders of the Tax Commissioner, Cassar claimed she couldn’t remember.

But Cassar had intervened personally to overrule objections  of other departments to the detriment of the public service. In one case, Cassar kept pestering the ITS CEO to get Alexia Gatt Spearing released without a replacement – “In view of that (sic) we spoke can I proceed with the release?”

That same day, Cassar gave official instructions for Gatt Spearing’s immediate release.

When the Commissioner challenged her about this undue urgency, Cassar replied “everything is urgent for me…I’ve been answering e-mails while waiting out here.”

The Commissioner wasn’t impressed – “The argument of Dr Cassar that ‘everything is urgent’ is not acceptable…this urgency explains why rules were broken with regards to the two entities (Muscat’s NGOs).”

“The breach of the rules was not simply an administrative oversight,” the Commissioner concluded.

He’s right. Joyce Cassar broke all the rules to accommodate Michelle Muscat and then attempted to cover it up. And now Michelle Muscat has thrown her under the bus.