Nepotism and Minister Anton Refalo’s daughter

Our Labour government has appointed a 19-year-old full-time student as director of the government-owned airline Malta Med Air.  She has no experience or expertise in the airline industry.

She is not remotely interested in leasing aircraft or chartering flights.  And even if she were, she wouldn’t know where to start.

She couldn’t be less fit to sit on the Board of Directors of the state-owned airline company. But she happens to be the daughter of Minister Anton Refalo.

So the best-ranked Minister in Labour’s government, Clyde Caruana, created a new seat at that board of directors specifically for Refalo’s teenage daughter. Needless to say, the seat comes with a generous honorarium for Simona Refalo. And guess where the thousands of euro going into Simona’s bank account will be coming from.

Exactly, you will be paying for her comfy seat on Malta Med Air’s Board of Directors. We all will.

If Labour’s best-ranked minister can stoop to such depths, you don’t really want to know what Labour’s worst minister, Roderick Galdes,  has been up to.

You have to give it to Labour – they really live by their creed – make hay while the sun shines.

Rosianne Cutajar’s description of what life is really like inside Labour’s core couldn’t be more apt – everybody pigs out.  Even the teenage offspring of our ministers are fighting it out at the trough.

But it’s not just Simona’s utter cluelessness in the airline industry that makes her totally unfit for her glorified director’s role. At her age, Simona has already been appointed mayor of Xewkija through fraud and dishonesty. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

Simona doesn’t live in Xewkija, the district she contested.  She lives with her parents in a sprawling villa in Qala, complete with a swimming pool in the back garden, formerly adorned by a stolen national historical artefact from the Victorian era, which The Shift revealed.

In those local council elections, she trounced all the other candidates, securing the most votes.  Her incredible victory propelled her to the post of full-time mayor of Xewkija while she was also a full-time university student.   But the numbers just didn’t add up.  Her victory was likely due to the extensive fraud committed by her entire family, including her father, the minister.

In order to get his own daughter into power in the local council elections, Minister Anton Refalo claimed he no longer lived in his villa in Qala but had moved to Triq il-Kbira in Xewkija. If that were true, the minister is estranged from his wife, Michelina, and living with a certain Kevin Borg, previously of Mosta, but whose registered address was also transferred to the same address in Xewkija.

In fact, the minister seems to be estranged from his entire family.

His wife, Michelina, is registered at a separate address in Triq it-Torri, Xewkija, with her daughter, Simona.  They’re both staying with Michelina’s aunt.  As for the minister’s son, Andre, he’s had it the worst.   He’s now living in an apartment in Ta’ Guzepp Court on Mġarr Road, Xewkija. That apartment is still in shell form.

To add insult to injury, the poor Andre lives in that unfinished property together with 12 other people.  Those 12 people also transferred their address to Xewkija before the local council elections in which Andre’s sister scored such a remarkable victory.

Some of those 12 people living with Andre’ in a property with no running water or electricity, exposed to the elements for lack of windows or doors, came from as far as Żurrieq, Mosta and Birkirkara. Many more people changed their addresses to unfinished properties in Xewkija before the local council elections.

Labour certainly starts them young. It’s no mean achievement for a 19-year-old who’s never resided in Xewkija to manage to clinch the mayor’s seat with a majority of votes. No wonder Finance Minister Clyde Caruana recognised her early promise, talent and grit and rewarded her handsomely with that director’s post.

She’s already proven her worth as mayor. One of her first actions was to drop a court case instituted by her predecessor, Hubert Saliba, against Ronald Debrincat, her father’s canvasser. Debrincat had snatched a large chunk of public land behind his house and simply added it to his property.

Unbelievably, Debrincat brought in heavy equipment, dismantled a swing and two public benches and built a sizeable room on the site at the back of his house. He even opened a back door from his newly extended property onto the playing field.

Gozo’s administrative Review Tribunal ruled that Debrincat had acted illegally. The court ruled that the authorities should institute legal action against Debrincat to reverse his blatant illegalities. But the Lands Authority refused to take any action against him.  Labour’s Xewkija mayor at the time, Hubert Saliba, was constrained to institute court action against Debrincat himself.

Debrincat’s case was proceeding in court until the enterprising new mayor of Xewkija, Simona Refalo, decided to drop the case against her father’s canvasser. She couldn’t let the poor guy continue to suffer persecution at the hands of the courts. Besides, Simona knew Debrincat pretty well. She’s a regular visitor at his home on that playing field in Gnien Castelvenere, where he helps her with her studies for her law degree course.

This is the country Labour created –  a country riven with blatant abuse of power, staggering nepotism, shameless fraud and unlimited looting of state resources for the personal benefit of Labour ministers and their children.

We watch in utter helplessness as the minister and his entire family make false declarations to ensure that Simona fraudulently gains power with total impunity.  Even worse, she is rewarded for her deceit with a publicly funded seat on a board of directors.