Updated | Muscat says €11,000 Dubai family trip paid with personal credit card

The Prime Minister has replied to claims about a 2016 holiday he took with his family in Dubai, saying the publication of a credit card receipt proves he had paid for the holiday himself.

“After a year alleging that the holiday was paid by somebody else, the Nationalist Party had admitted the prime minister paid for the holiday himself,” the OPM said in a statement.

The Nationalist Party is resurrecting questions on an expensive €11,000 holiday taken out by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his family in 2016, following on a report by Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia on a visa receipt she claims was charged to Muscat’s account. “The question Muscat is running from is how he could have afforded an €11,000 trip in Dubai last year when he declared just €68,000 in his declaration of assets. The people expect replies,” the PN said.

Last year the PN was insisting that the seven-day holiday in Dubai is not affordable on the salary of a Maltese Prime Minister and that Muscat should publish receipts of his Easter holiday. Muscat is reported to have spent his 2016 Easter break at the Hotel Atlantis, The Palms.

Muscat has told reporters that he personally pays for his holidays.

“As the receipt shows, the Prime Minister paid through his credit card, with which he paid off throughout the year in recorded banking transactions. It would be transparent of the Opposition leader to publish the false invoices his party’s companies issued in breach of the party financing rules. This is only a desperate attempt to avoid having to prove that these were ‘dirty’ donations,” the OPM said.

In his declaration of assets filed in 2016, the Prime Minister declared €75,000 deposited in a Bank of Valletta account. In the income tax return, Muscat declared earning €52,024 as prime minister. This figure excludes allowances.

In a reaction to a press conference by Labour earlier today, the PN insisted that it did not funnel donations from the db Group into its media arm Media.Link, and that in 2016 it rendered commercial services by way of programme sponsorships to the company for a total of €70,800. The company has claimed it was paying the donation as a salary for PN secretary-general Rosette Thake and CEO Brian St John.