Ingrid Zammit Young successfully negotiated a €75,000 golden handshake to leave her job at GO a few days before the Justice Minister got the green light from Cabinet to nominate her as a magistrate, The Sunday Times of Malta can reveal.

This newspaper is informed that Dr Zammit Young, who was employed as one of the telecoms company’s in-house lawyers for many years, signed a contract to obtain a €75,000 payout to end her job and avail herself of a voluntary redundancy scheme just a few days before her nomination to the bench.

When contacted, Dr Zammit Young admitted she had signed the contract to end her job just a week before her nomination. However, she insisted this was just “a coincidence” and had nothing to do with her eventual nomination by the minister, Owen Bonnici.

Asked when she was approached by Dr Bonnici for the post, Dr Zammit Young refused to reply. “Why do you need to know,” she asked.

Dr Bonnici also declined to say when he met Dr Zammit Young.

At the same time, Dr Bonnici is denying he nominated the former GO lawyer to become a magistrate because of his political connections with her father.

Labour sources told this newspaper that Godwin Young, secretary of the Labour Party’s local committee in Fgura and a prominent Labour canvasser in the third and firth electoral districts, had helped Dr Bonnici in the past electoral campaign.

However, when asked whether the nomination of Mr Young’s daughter to the bench was connected with her father’s political backing, Dr Bonnici denied this.

“Mr Godwin Young never acted as a canvasser for the minister,” a spokeswoman for Dr Bonnici said.

“The minister rebuts unreservedly any allegation, construed in any way it is construed, that Mr Godwin Young, directly or indirectly, influenced or in any way had a bearing on the minister’s or Cabinet’s decision to nominate Dr Ingrid Zammit Young,” she said.

Dr Bonnici underlined that the decision to nominate Dr Zammit Young was not his but that of the entire Cabinet.

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