Former GRTU treasurer resigned after being bypassed by Vince Farrugia, Paul Abela

Mark Saliba, who had stepped down from the post of treasurer of the GRTU in 2009 after just one year in the role, has told magistrate Francesco Depasquale that he resigned his post due to transactions which took place without his permission. Saliba had occupied the post for just one year.

This emerged during a sitting in a libel case filed by former GRTU director Vince Farrugia, dating back to a 2011 MaltaToday op-ed titled “A Cuckoo’s Nest”, which had been penned by architect Michael Falzon, outgoing President of the Malta Developers Association at the time.

“When I was treasurer, there was time when I would not be given the invoices, as should happen. I had summoned a council meeting to clarify this point, during which I had made several requests for the creation of a finance committee, but this never came to fruition”.

“I had gone to the office of the auditor, with [GRTU President] Paul Abela and the accountant – who was the wife of the auditor, another fact which I wasn’t happy with, as it was unethical. During that meeting, I had asked for a finance committee to be created with at least two members. We had agreed on a date but the meeting was cancelled on the morning it was supposed to convene.”

He explained that according to the union’s statute, cheques had to be signed by Saliba and the president or the president and the vice-president, in Saliba’s absence.

The straw which broke the camel’s back came when he made the chance discovery that this rule was being abused to bypass him. “One day, I got a call from a shop about a cheque, signed by then director general Vince Farrugia and president Paul Abela. I then tendered my resignation because I didn’t want to be responsible for things which I did not have oversight of.”

In the article, carried by the MaltaToday in 2011, Michael Falzon accused the GRTU of trying “to take a free ride on what was going to be announced in the budget as a result of MDA's consistent lobbying". Following the budget speech, GRTU director Vince Farrugia implied that government had partially accepted his organisation's demands, as this excerpt from his official reaction published in The Times shows: 

“GRTU's real paying membership figures have dwindled dramatically over the years and in fact the number is much less than the vaunted 7,000/8,000 members. However, its income was boosted as a result of the distributed monies from the reserves of the Malta Trade Fair Corporation, of which the GRTU is a shareholder; and now comes also from government handouts under some guise or another; and its commercial venture Green MT Ltd, through which it competes with potential members”

In his 2011 application, filing the libel suit, GRTU director Vince Farrugia had said the article in question was intended to damage his reputation and benefit the MDA. He cited a hidden agenda on the part of MDA president Falzon and its vice president Sandro Chetcuti, who he pointed out, was in the midst of criminal proceedings for Farrugia’s attempted murder in a punch-up, at the time.

Chetcuti was eventually convicted of slight bodily harm, after Farrugia was found to have been attempting to cajole witnesses into perjuring themselves. Farrugia is, in fact, understood to now be facing criminal proceedings relating to perjury.