Malta Enterprise says former China envoy ‘personally’ picked by former chairman

Malta Enterprise today said that the former envoy to China was handpicked by former chairman Alan Camilleri without issuing an open call and explained that the envoy terminated his contract prematurely after being given no resources to cover the whole of China and Asia.

The agency was reacting to a report published by the Sunday Times which claimed that energy and health minister Konrad Mizzi’s wife, Sai Mizzi Liang is receiving more than three times the salary package paid to, Paul Cardona, her predecessor in her role as Malta Enterprise representative in China.

However, Malta Enterprise said “as at March 2013, there was no employee, nor any external contractor of Malta Enterprise, focusing on investment in China,” adding that Cardona had “prematurely” terminated his contract one year before its expiry.

“The person concerned was recruited directly by the then chairman of Malta Enterprise Alan Camilleri in April 2010 without a public call. Although the contract was for three years, the person concerned left after only two years.”

While noting that Malta Enterprise was not satisfied with Cardona’s performance, the agency said that Cardona, who was “personally recruited” by the former chairman, “was given an impossible task (that of exclusive responsibility for investment promotion for the whole of China and Asia) without commensurate resources and without clearly defined and focused objectives, it is not at all surprising that there were no results whatsoever.”

The agency added that the media that reported on this case is “warmly encouraged” to ask former chairman Alan Camilleri, whose brother Ivan authored the report, “why in his view the contractor ended his contract before its expiry.”

The statement also pointed out that currently the agency has active investment promotion programmes in the US, Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, the Ukraine, Russia China including Hong Kong, Egypt and Algeria.

Malta Enterprise added that it intends to intensify its programmes by the end of the year and expand its operations to other countries such as Switzerland, Austria, Australia, Finland, Turkey, Canada and South Korea. 

While noting that the agency only approved two new foreign direct investments projects in 2010, 11 in 2011 and two in 2012, Malta Enterprise said that between May and December 2013 “a record total of 36 new FDI projects has been approved.”

Moreover, in the first six months of this year, a further 17 projects were approved and the board of directors is expecting to generate 624 new jobs through these projects.