[WATCH] Prime Minister did not speak with Joseph Muscat about Mizzi contract

PM on Konrad Mizzi's contract termination

Robert Abela has said that he didn’t speak to Joseph Muscat about the Malta Tourism Authority contract which had been awarded to Konrad Mizzi.

The Prime Minister said that, once he was informed about the €80,000 a year consultancy which former tourism minister Mizzi had been awarded after resigning, he had immediately asked for the contract to be terminated.

Mizzi had signed the contract two weeks after he resigned from his ministerial post. His resignation at the end of November came as a result of the political fallout from the revelations emerging from Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder investigation.

Following his stepping down, nobody was appointed tourism minister in his stead, which ultimately means that Muscat would have been responsible for that portfolio.

Mizzi’s contract was terminated earlier this week following widespread criticism.

Asked whether, once he had been made aware of Mizzi’s MTA contract, he had asked Muscat whether it was he who had approved it, Abela said that he “didn’t enter into that aspect”

“The moment I got to know about the contract, I took the decision, together with Julia Farrugia Portelli, that it had to be revoked,” Abela, who was fielding comments from journalist on the back of a meeting with the Malta Chamber of SMEs on Thursday, said.

Pressed on why he didn’t feel the need to clarify the issue with his predecessor (Muscat), Abela said that he would only answer for the decisions he made himself.

“I took the decision which was needed. I will answer for what I myself did. I took the decision immediately,” he emphasised.