Updated 9.45am
Clayton Bartolo resigned as Tourism Minister on Tuesday, weeks after a Standards Commissioner report concluded that he abused his ministerial power by giving his wife a top-paid consultancy job she did not do.
According to sources, Bartolo, 37, spoke to Prime Minister Robert Abela on Monday evening and again on Tuesday morning, when he tendered his resignation as minister.
Attempts to contact Bartolo for comment were unsuccessful.
Abela has previously said that he saw no reason for Bartolo to resign over the scandal. Sources told Times of Malta that his view changed after information about a second, as-yet unreported scandal involving Bartolo and his wife came to his attention.
A former Mellieħa councillor and deputy mayor, Bartolo was first elected to parliament in 2017 and appointed junior minister for financial services in January 2020, when Robert Abela assumed office as prime minister.
In November that year he was promoted to full minister, taking over the tourism brief.
As tourism minister, Bartolo oversaw a record post-pandemic recovery in tourist arrivals but also various controversies over excessive – and skewed – spending by entities under his watch, most notably the Malta Tourism Authority and Malta Film Commission.
The job scandal
Bartolo’s most recent controversy began in December 2020, when he made his wife (then girlfriend) Amanda Muscat a ministry consultant. Muscat was his secretary at the time.
In March 2021, she was transferred to Clint Camilleri’s Gozo Ministry and given a pay bump, shifting her salary up to €68,000 a year.
But in reality, Muscat continued to work as Bartolo’s secretary throughout, while earning a consultant’s salary – including a €20,000-a-year “expertise allowance” that regulations state should only be given in “exceptional circumstances”.
The Standards Commissioner found no evidence that Muscat – whose sole qualifications were a couple of A levels and whose previous job experience focused on secretarial work – did any consultancy work for either ministry.
Bartolo initially insisted offered a conditional apology for the breach, saying “no one is perfect” and saying calls for him to resign were based on “political spin”.
But anger about the scandal showed no sign of abating and fresh calls for him to resign were still being made as recently as Monday, when multiple University of Malta student organisations said he had to go.
The other minister involved
Bartolo is just one of two ministers embroiled in the scandal. Clint Camilleri, the Gozo Minister who fictitiously employed Muscat for most of 2021, was also found guilty of abusing his ministerial power.
Camilleri has insisted he did nothing wrong and followed all rules and procedures throughout.
In written submissions to the Standards Commissioner, Camilleri insisted Muscat was selected by his ministry’s permanent secretary, not himself.
The Commissioner found that hard to believe, noting that persons of trust (as Muscat was) must resign when a minister is changed and saying it was “inconceivable” that such a person is selected without the minister’s blessing.
Camilleri’s lawyer also told the commissioner that the minister knew what Muscat was working on and never had any issues with the quality of her work as a consultant – work there is no evidence Muscat did.
“One can debate if a minister should be held responsible for the actions of their persons of trust,” the Standards Commissioner concluded. “But if a minister defends those actions and to do so even makes statements that are not factual, there is no doubt he is assuming personal responsibility for those events,” he said of Camilleri.
More to follow
