Three Gozo Ministry officials, suspended last July amid corruption claims, have been reinstated, Times of Malta is informed.
The Gozo Ministry would not confirm that the three officials were back at work. However, a spokesman for Minister Justyne Caruana insisted that a magisterial inquiry into allegations of corruption in connection with government road building and maintenance tenders were still ongoing.
“Replies will be given accordingly once this is concluded”, the spokesman said.
Times of Malta is informed the three officials were contacted a few days ago and informed they could report for work again. However, on Dr Caruana’s insistence, they were not given the same roles before their suspension but were assigned to the Foundation for Tomorrow Schools in Gozo.
The FTS did not have an office on Gozo, but two of the three suspended officials, a director and an architect, were for all intents and purposes now considered employees of the government’s school-building agency, sources said. They work from offices separate from the Gozo Ministry in Victoria.
The suspended officials are known to have been close aides of ex-Gozo minister Anton Refalo. At the last election, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat decided to appoint Dr Caruana instead of Dr Refalo, who was confirmed to be Gozo’s most popular Labour candidate.
“The suspension of the three officials could be interpreted as another move by the present minister to disassociate herself completely from her predecessor,” the sources noted.
“In Gozo everyone knows that Dr Caruana and Dr Refalo do not see eye to eye, and everything indicates the three suspended officials were caught in the crossfire,” they added.
Except for a statement by Dr Caruana last year that three officials had been suspended in connection with roadworks tenders, the Gozo Ministry has, so far, given no details on what exactly is being investigated.
Times of Malta is informed that the irregularity claims were made by a senior ministry employee, who alleged that irregularities in the way road construction tenders were assigned had occurred under both Dr Refalo and his predecessor, Giovanna Debono, in the last Nationalist administration.
It is not known what stage the police investigations have reached.
Criminal investigation falls under the direct responsibility of Deputy Police Commissioner Silvio Valletta, Dr Caruana’s husband.
Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar said when asked that he did not think Mr Valletta had a conflict of interest.