PM pocketed €80,000 in overtime work over three years when PA lawyer

Prime Minister Robert Abela pocketed €80,000 for 1,400 hours of overtime work during his tenure at the Planning Authority.

LovinMalta reported the PM, who had pocketed €17,000 a month by working as a lawyer for the PA through direct order, requested the payment in 2017, but covered a three-year period.

Roberta Abela’s law firm, Abela Advocates, renounced the PA brief when he became PM in January last year.

The lucrative contract was originally assigned to Abela’s father, George Abela, in 2001, when he was a partner with planning law expert Ian Stafrace in Abela, Stafrace & Associates. Stafrace was later appointed to the PA as chief executive under a Nationalist administration.

Abela’s tenure at the PA recently came under fire when it was revealed an ODZ villa he bought for €600,000 had been regularised by the PA’s planning commission three months before.

Reports revealed on Wednesday the €80,000 payment overed additional hours worked during May 2014 and November 2014; December 2014 and July 2015; September 2015 to July 2016; and January 2017.

A PQ in 2014 by PN MP Toni Bezzina to former PM Joseph Muscat revealed Abela Advocates had been awarded a €3,000 a month contract for three years, charging €55 an hour for additional work.

It was also revealed that between 2013 and 2019, the firm was paid €1.2 million, with Times of Malta reporting that it increased from €7,300 monthly (in 2013) to €17,110 (in 2019).

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