PL president paid thousands by Chris Fearne

Labour Party president Alex Sciberras was placed on the Foreign Ministry’s payroll just one day after Chris Fearne returned to the Cabinet despite his ongoing criminal case, The Shift has learned.

Ministry sources said Sciberras is paid tens of thousands of euros annually for a position described as part-time. He has become one of Fearne’s closest advisers, accompanies the minister on overseas trips, and also serves as president of the governing party.

So far, taxpayers remain in the dark about what they are paying for. Fearne’s Foreign Ministry has not supplied Sciberras’s contract despite a Freedom of Information request.

Sciberras has also left questions unanswered.

The Shift asked him to specify his role, whether his appointment is full-time or part-time, his remuneration and whether he would remain Labour president.

No answers were forthcoming.

Diplomatic sources told The Shift that the overlapping positions raise conflict-of-interest concerns about where Sciberras’s responsibilities to the Labour Party end and his publicly funded government duties begin. Without his contract, the terms governing that distinction remain unknown.

Meanwhile, Sciberras has announced that he will seek another term as Labour president.

He said he believed in a party “open to people, to ideas, and even to difficult questions”.

However, he declined to answer questions about his own government remuneration.

Sciberras won the presidency in September 2024, defeating former PBS news chief Norma Saliba by 14 votes. He had previously supported Fearne in the leadership contest that brought Robert Abela to power.

The Foreign Ministry appointment adds to a succession of paid government roles.

In November 2025, The Shift reported how Sciberras made a killing from his own government’s scandalous hospitals heist, as he was paid €267,420 from state coffers for fees for representing Malta in the Steward Healthcare arbitration. The government lost the case. He had joined the legal team before becoming Labour president and continued afterwards.

Earlier, Sciberras served as an OPM adviser under disgraced former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and held several government board positions.

In 2020, The Shift identified him as the unnamed adviser whose prominent role in negotiations over the former ITS site drew criticism from the National Audit Office.

At the time, he worked closely with disgraced former OPM chief, Keith Schembri.

The audit found inadequate oversight.

Sciberras said he neither established policy nor approved negotiated terms, maintaining that he had fulfilled his responsibilities.