Nationalist leader Simon Busuttil should immediately sack his deputy Beppe Fenech Adami because he was being investigated in relation to money laundering claims, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat insisted this morning.
“This is the exact same situation [as that of Keith Schembri],” Dr Muscat told a crowd in Qala. “If he’s not a hypocrite, he should sack him immediately.”
A judicial inquiry into claims that a money-laundering investigation was halted after Dr Fenech Adami’s name cropped up as a director of the company involved was inconclusive last March, with Dr Muscat subsequently passing the report on to the FIAU.
READ: Busuttil stands by his deputy Fenech Adami
The Prime Minister yesterday said that a sealed part of that report revealed that Dr Fenech Adami was “under investigation for being complicit in a company involved in drug-related money laundering,” and he repeated the claim today.
€5 million Cabinet deal
The PL leader also returned to claims he first made during yesterday’s Xarabank debate, that Dr Busuttil had abused of his position of PN deputy leader in 2013 to force through a €5 million out-of-court settlement for legal clients of his and PN executive president Ann Fenech’s.
He said the case had dragged on through the courts for years without any sign of resolution, until Dr Busuttil had been made PN deputy leader, when in January 2013 cabinet signed off on the settlement deal.
“How many hundreds of thousands did he make from the deal?” Dr Muscat thundered.
The Prime Minister also returned to his talk of PN deputy Mario de Marco "having a company in Cyprus." Dr de Marco has said he is the director of a company in Cyprus and that this is included in his declaration of assets.
He began with a caveat. "I'm not saying Dr de Marco did anything wrong," he said, before arguing that Dr Busuttil had insisted that having an overseas company was wrong "even if it is declared."
Gozo
Dr Muscat told the Gozitan crowd that Dr Busuttil would not have the money to follow through on his pledge to renationalise Gozo general hospital and that doing so would see Barts medical school pack its bags.
He mocked the PN’s proposal to hand €10,000 grants to families who relocated to Gozo, asking if police would be knocking on people’s doors to ensure they were still on the island, and contrasted the pledge to the PL plan to give companies which relocated to Gozo a three-year tax holiday and others a €10,000 credit for each Gozitan worker employed.
Dr Muscat told the crowd to take his rival’s talk about the proposed undersea tunnel with a pinch of salt.
“Who do you trust to get it done,” he asked, “the people who spent 15 years to build a ferry terminal in Cirkewwa, or those who built Kappara junction in a year?”