Evarist Bartolo must pay €5,000 in libel damages to former EU agency head

The Court of Magistrates has ordered former education minister Evarist Bartolo to pay €5,000 in damages to Maria Dolores Camilleri after finding that comments he made in 2016 about her removal from a government agency were defamatory.

In a judgment delivered on Tuesday, Magistrate Victor Axiak said that Bartolo’s public statements suggesting Camilleri’s dismissal was linked to “legal issues” and taken in the interest of “good governance” carried a defamatory meaning and were not justified by the facts.

The case stems from an interview published in The Malta Independent on 12 February 2016. 

At the time, Camilleri had just been terminated from her post as national coordinator of the European Union Programme Agency (EUPA), which administers Erasmus+ funds, days before the expiry of her six-month probation period.

Asked to explain her removal, Bartolo had said there “might be legal issues involved” and that the decision was taken in the interest of “good governance”. 

Camilleri subsequently filed a libel suit, arguing that the remarks suggested criminal or fraudulent conduct and were intended to damage her reputation.

In her testimony, Camilleri said she was “shocked” by the comments. She told the court that upon taking office, she found the agency in financial difficulty, with debts of around €200,000, and had introduced measures such as management accounts, a risk register, and audit trails. 

Her legal team presented evidence that these reforms were noted positively during a European Commission supervisory visit shortly before her dismissal.

After her dismissal, Camilleri was unable to find work of equivalent remuneration, saying that she had to accept a €23,000 salary over her previous position of €34,000.

Bartolo argued that his statements were substantially true and based on information contained in an internal audit report and a fact-finding board report set up in January 2016. 

He said the reports referred to alleged conflicts of interest and misuse of public resources, which, in his view, justified reference to governance concerns. The fact-finding board appointed to analyse Camilleri’s process was deemed by Camilleri as inept, created with the aim of finding fault in her operations.

Camilleri said that she had been given half an hour to reply to four questions that were posed to her.

The report prepared was based almost wholly on the testimony of EUPA employees, including words such as “scaring the daylights of the staff”.

It also included the fact that a lot of employees had to resign or go out on long sick leave, 

Other employees had described that Camilleri used to hide behind doors to check on an employee, and another employee said that he had started to take antidepressants because of her.

A central issue in the proceedings was a magisterial inquiry conducted by then magistrate Natasha Galea Sciberras into the alleged misuse of a computer. 

The inquiry, together with evidence heard in the libel case, raised questions about the reliability of the fact-finding board’s conclusions. The court found that the board kept no official minutes and no record of who presented evidence. 

It also emerged that an email attributed to an employee and used to attribute responsibility to Camilleri for the loss of €150,000 in EU funds had been presented in a version that omitted a sentence found in the original. 

The magistrate described this as a serious irregularity and said the report did not “do credit to those responsible for it”.

Applying the “single meaning” rule, the court assessed how a reasonable reader would understand the words used by the minister. 

In the context of an agency handling substantial EU funds, the terms “legal issues” and “good governance” would be interpreted as implying misconduct or serious impropriety, rather than mere inefficiency, the magistrate held.

The court examined the specific allegations cited in the reports. 

On an alleged conflict of interest involving Camilleri’s husband, it was found that she had flagged the matter to the European Commission and her superiors and that mitigation measures were accepted. 

Claims that she used public funds to pay personal traffic fines were not proven, with receipts showing she had settled the fines herself.

As to the alleged loss of €150,000, the court said there was no evidence of improper behaviour by Camilleri. It described the matter as a professional error arising from conflicting internal advice, compounded by the altered email presented to the board.

Magistrate Axiak concluded that the “sting” of the allegations was not substantially true or justified. 

He found that the minister had relied on the board’s conclusions without further verification, despite having received information from Camilleri setting out her position.

The court ordered Bartolo to pay Camilleri €5,000 in damages.