Between May 1, 1999 and April 30, 2004 the Nationalist government gave Simon Busuttil, then head of the Malta-EU Information Centre, €82,144.63 worth of consultancy services. Foreign Minister George Vella told Carmelo Abela (PL) that the payments were made to Europa Research Consultancy Services as part of a contract with Ganado Sammut Advocates.

Dr Busuttil was also paid €1,130.45. Dr Vella said it could not be verified whether this pertained to fringe benefits such as mobile telephony and the fully-expensed car mentioned in the contract.

It had been calculated that Dr Busuttil had been entitled to a maximum of 1,650 litres of petrol, but it could not be verified if the payment had been made or not.

Dr Vella said there was no evidence of a call for tenders for the services having been made in 1999. The contract had been renewed annually by direct order.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.