A man under police criminal investigation over fraud and corruption at the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools was a registered Labour Party counting agent at the last general elections.
Senior Labour officials told this newspaper they were “appalled” to see Edward Caruana, a former chief canvasser of Education Minister Evarist Bartolo at the centre of the police investigation – working side by side with them at the Naxxar counting hall.
“Although it is true that we still won the election and obtained a massive advantage over the Nationalists, Mr Caruana’s presence at the counting hall on behalf of Labour was not on. This cannot be justified,” a veteran Labour counting agent told this newspaper.
“We protested with the top Labour echelons, but our comments fell on deaf ears,” another party official, who preferred to remain anonymous, told this newspaper. He passed on a picture of Mr Caruana speaking to police officers at the counting hall.
The initiative to enlist Mr Caruana as an agent was taken by the party itself, which officially registered him on June 1. Mr Caruana acted as Labour Party agent for a number of elections in the past.
The Labour Party did not reply to questions sent by this newspaper.
Soon after the 2013 elections, Mr Caruana, whose brother is the permanent secretary of the Education Ministry, was given a €50,000 job at the government’s school-building agency on the recommendation of Mr Bartolo.
In 2015, allegations were made against him by a Gozitan contractor, who claimed that Mr Caruana had asked him for a €30,000 bribe in relation to payments for work at the Gozo sixth form.
Following these allegations, the police started proceedings against the contractor for tarnishing Mr Caruana’s reputation. However, Mr Caruana was again in hot water the following summer, when Philip Rizzo, who at the time was CEO of the FTS, submitted a 200-page dossier to the government and the police that listed the wrongdoings by Mr Caruana and others involving hundreds of thousands of euros.
Mr Rizzo’s documents are still being studied by the police.
In an interview with The Sunday Times of Malta, Mr Rizzo said that despite informing the Prime Minister and Mr Bartolo of the serious claims, nothing was done and the Prime Minister insisted that he take up the issue with Mr Bartolo.
Eventually, Mr Rizzo resigned.
When the scandal broke last year, Mr Bartolo said he took immediate action as soon as Mr Rizzo had made his claims. However, he later said that he took a few months to refer the case to the police, as he was looking for a “smoking gun”.
The police has still not issued any criminal charges against Mr Caruana.
During the investigations, it also emerged that during the time of his involvement in school building projects for the FTS, Mr Caruana was also developing a massive private block of apartments in Rabat.
ivan.camilleri@timesofmalta.com