Data Commissioner Saviour Cachia “admonished” the Tourism Ministry for failing to abide by its legal obligation to provide timely responses to queries made under the Freedom of Information Act.
The ministry dragged its feet for over five months to reply to a request for a list of all contracts given to Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi’s financial advisers, Nexia BT. Nexia BT was the audit firm used by Dr Mizzi to set up a secret company in Panama.
Public authorities are legally obliged to provide an answer to an FOI request within 20 working days. The deadline is extendable by a further 20 days.
Read: Tourism Ministry refuses to list Nexia BT contracts
The ministry informed the Times of Malta in April it would be extending the 20-day deadline due to the large volume of documents involved in the request. However, the ministry failed to say whether it would be providing the information requested when the deadline expired.
It did not constitute a valid request for access
It took a formal complaint to the ministry to solicit a reply, which said that what this newspaper had asked for did not constitute a valid request for access to an identifiable document.
The ministry only provided the information last month, after another complaint was filed with the Data Commissioner, who decides on such complaints.
In a letter, the Data Commissioner chided the Tourism Ministry for failing to abide by the time frames in terms of law. Mr Cachia warned that, in case of a similar occurrence, the ministry might be subject to “the appropriate enforcement action”.
The information eventually provided by the ministry shows that Nexia BT was granted €19,000 to update a 2016 study they carried out on public conveniences. Among other reasons, a ministry spokesman said the updated study needed to be carried out due to an increase in tourism numbers.
Read: Nexia BT gets another €19,000 for public conveniences study
The information obtained by the Times of Malta on the basis of requests made under the Freedom of Information Act have shown that Nexia BT has been given upwards of €1 million in public contracts since Labour returned to government in 2013, over half of which were given by the Office of the Prime Minister and entities under its control.
Data from the Tourism Ministry shows that Nexia BT benefitted from over €300,000 worth of consultancy and advisory contracts from Project Malta, another entity falling under Dr Mizzi’s political control.