Orizzont ordered to pay civil servant €4000 in libel damages

The court concluded that though ‘public servants were subject to wider criticism than private individuals, journalists were to ensure that reported facts were true, backed by sufficient evidence’

A former government official and his wife have been awarded €4,000 in libel damages from Maltese daily l-Orizzont over a series of articles about the couple which had been published shortly after the 2013 General Elections.

Permanent Secretary within the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs, Christopher Ciantar and his wife Eleanor filed for libel after allegations of nepotism were made in a six-article series.

The publication claimed that when Ciantar - a former WasteServ Director - had occupied the post of Permanent Secretary to then Minister George Pullicino, his wife, also a civil servant, had benefited from special treatment

Eleanor Ciantar had progressed to the post of Principal in 2009, having joined the public service as typist back in 1991. In 2009, she was assigned the role of Manager at ‘Naturalment Malti’, a post allegedly created for her within the same Ministry as her husband.

L-Orizzont had also gone on to allege that Eleanor Ciantar had earned €12,000 in overtime, had benefited from a €400 scholarship to follow a Maltese proof reading course at the University of Malta, and had regularly travelled abroad.

After the 2013 election, she was moved to a managerial post within the Fisheries department, after being selected through the standard interview procedure.

Magistrate Francesco Depasquale, presiding over the court of magistrates noted that the only proof brought forward by the newspaper to support its claims was an affidavit, a number of parliamentary questions about the issue and a breakdown of Ciantar's overtime payments which was made available by OPM.

The magistrate observed that former minister Leo Brincat, who had taken over the portfolio of Pullicino, had declared when asked about the matter in Parliament, that no action was to be taken against the Ciantar spouses and that “the only advice given to him was that the matter was to end there.”

However, the Labour Party media had failed to inform its readership about this development, the court observed.

The court was shown evidence proving that when Ciantar had been removed from office in October 2013, his wife had secured a three-year contract to manage the Fisheries Control on the basis of her competence alone.

The magistrate remarked that the accusations were borne of jealousy and a rivalry that hindered the country's progress. “Publishing stories which are untrue is harmful not only to the subject whose reputation is tarnished, but also to journalism in general.”

Although public servants were subject to wider criticism than private individuals, journalists were to ensure that reported facts were true, backed by sufficient evidence, which in this case was missing, the court concluded, declaring the articles defamatory and ordering the newspaper to pay €4,000 in damages to the couple.