Updated | Tourism Minister orders immediate termination of Konrad Mizzi contract
Julia Farrugia Portelli orders Malta Tourism Authority to immediately terminate and annul Konrad Mizzi’s lucrative consultancy contract • No payments ever effected
The Tourism Minster has ordered that Konrad Mizzi’s lucrative contract with the Malta Tourism Authority be immediately terminated.
After seeking legal advice, Julia Farrugia Portelli instructed the MTA to, with immediate effect, terminate and annul the three-year contract, which would have seen former minister Mizzi pocket €80,000 a year.
No payments had ever been effected to Mizzi under the contract, the Tourism Minister said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
The decision to scrap the contract comes following a widespread backlash after the consultancy deal was first reported in the media yesterday evening.
Earlier
Earlier today, Farrugia Portelli said she was waiting for legal advice on the validity of Mizzi’s MTA contract before deciding what to do with it.
The Tourism Minister said she expected to take a decision on the matter “in the coming hours” after she received legal advice on the €80,000 per year consultancy awarded to her predecessor last December.
Farrugia Portelli told journalists today that she only got to know about the contract on Monday afternoon and immediately asked for it to be legally vetted. She was visiting the hangars at Lufthansa Technik.
The contract was awarded by the MTA last December, just two weeks after Mizzi resigned from tourism minister in the wake of Yorgen Fenech’s arrest linked to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder.
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The consultancy was awarded at a time when no tourism minister was in place – then prime minister Joseph Muscat did not appoint a replacement for Mizzi – and when the country was in political turmoil.
Farrugia Portelli skirted a question when asked whether she was comfortable with this contract, insisting that she will wait for legal advice.
Mizzi’s contract also allowed for the use of a fully-expensed car with driver, medical insurance for him and his family, fully paid internet and mobile services.
The income from this consultancy would have made Mizzi better paid than the Prime Minister.