Not his brother’s keeper? Mario Cutajar has to answer for brother’s government appointment

Malta’s civil service head Mario Cutajar might not be his brother’s keeper.

But opposition parties and civil society activists are already calling for his head. Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi called for an inquiry. Alternattiva Demokratika chairperson Carmel Cacopardo said Mario Cutajar’s claims that he was unaware of his brother’s re-insertion to government employ are hardly believable, and that he should resign, together with the foreign minister who approved Cutajar’s appointment.

Occupying such a sensitive role as Cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, the first question for Mario Cutajar will be for full transparency on his brother’s government record now that he has been charged with money laundering.

On the ecourts website, the court sentence for a 2005 criminal case against Aldo Cutajar is no longer online, thanks to the dangerous precedent that Malta’s director of the courts had started in 2018. It is only thanks to newspaper court reporters that we know that Cutajar, the Shanghai consul facing money laundering charges, as an employee of the Arts and Culture Department had received a suspended two-year jail term for misappropriating Lm1,225.

The court also ordered him to be perpetually interdicted. So how did he, in 2018, suddenly become Malta’s consul to Shanghai? And how was he allowed a person-of-trust appointment if he was not a civil service employee? This is something Mario Cutajar has to answer for.

He was already posted to Beijing in 2016 as first secretary, the same year he started work in the foreign ministry under George Vella, today President. This raises questions as to how someone who is perpetually interdicted was reinstated to the public sector.

Cutajar’s lawyers also successfully obtained a right-to-forget expungement of that public court record right before his appointment as Shanghai consul. Former justice minister Owen Bonnici has denied he approved the expungement. The action was effected by courts director Frank Mercieca.

In March 2018, Cutajar was appointed as successor to Sai Mizzi in Shanghai.

Mario Cutajar has denied having had any role or being consulted over his brother’s role in Beijing and later in Shanghai, and that he has made himself available for questioning by police on his personal financial affairs. He will also recuse himself from disciplinary procedures to be taken by the Public Service Commission against his brother.

Blood relatives, some resignations

In 1993, the commander of Malta’s armed forces stepped down when his son Meinrad Calleja was charged with drug trafficking, together with his sister. The Nationalist prime minister at the time was said to have faced some opposition from Calleja’s patron, the deputy prime minister Guido de Marco. But Eddie Fenech Adami’s word prevailed. The chief of Malta’s armed forces could not command trust when his own children had been arrested on such serious charges.

A linked episode was the forced resignation of the PN agriculture minister Lawrence Gatt in 1994, partly after it had been revealed that his son Etienne had used his Mosta constituency office to meet the convicted murderer Charles ‘Pips’ Muscat, in a drug trafficking conspiracy.

In 2008, then Nationalist parliamentary secretary Chris Said’s two brothers were charged with the gang-rape of a 15-year-old girl. Said informed Lawrence Gonzi of the imminent arraignment, but publicly declared that the PM had decreed that, “given that I had nothing to do with the case, I should go on with my job and stay away from the case.”

Asked if he offered his resignation, Said said: “The prime minister told me I was doing a good job as parliamentary secretary and that I should continue doing it.”

He had also defended himself from guilt by association of two of his 13-sibling family: “You can’t lump everyone in the same basket. Whoever commits a mistake has to pay for it, but on the other hand I don’t want to be the one to deny them a fair trial.” (Said had reported his two brothers to the planning authority over construction illegalities).

The case was further complicated by attempts from a Nadur priest and two lawyers to pay the family of the rape victim €7,000 not to testify against her rapists, apart from a €23,000 “pledge” for the men not to approach the victim. Chris Said had told MaltaToday he was not aware of the approach made to the girl’s family. 

Shamefully, that case is still ongoing to this day.