State regulators donated over €200,000 to Marigold Foundation since 2014

Foundation headed by Michelle Muscat, former PM Joseph Muscat’s wife, received donations upwards of €200,000 from the MFSA and the Malta Gaming Authority since 2014

Michelle Muscat (centre) with Sean Hepburn Ferrer, an ambassador for Rare Disease Day 2015
Michelle Muscat (centre) with Sean Hepburn Ferrer, an ambassador for Rare Disease Day 2015

The Marigold Foundation, chaired by Michelle Muscat the wife of former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, received over €200,000 in donations from state regulators.

The information was revealed inn a parliamentary question by PN MP Claudette Buttigieg on Wednesday.

Statistics provided by the Finance Minister Edward Scicluna showed that the foundation received donations of €1,000 in 2015, €26,000 in 2019 and €25,000 in 2020 from the Malta Financial Services Authority.

The Malta Gaming Authority donated the sum of €170,000 in the years between 2015 and 2019.

On Sunday, MaltaToday reported how Michelle Muscat has presided over one of the most formidable fund-raising as well as generous charities of the past six years.

With a €200,000 capital endowment by the partly government-owned Bank of Valletta, Michelle Muscat’s role as spouse of the prime minister was invested as chair of the Marigold Foundation, a charity that became the prime vehicle of Muscat’s personage, but also a pioneer of less popular causes such as rare diseases.

Since then, Muscat’s charity events and her annual swimming challenge raised over €2.3 million: Marigold today has a surplus of €559,060, excluding BOV’s founding capital. For all intents and purposes a charity ‘owned’ by the bank, the foundation’s equity has always enjoyed a steady rise. In total, the charity now has over €776,000 in cash equivalents.

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But the foundation has been generous in disbursements every year, with 48% to 70% of its revenues given out from 2014 to 2018, for a total of €1.38 million donated to its causes – that makes up 60% of historic donations.

Expenses rose steadily from €14,752 in its first year to €141,000 in 2018 – a total of €365,114 over five years, or 16% of total donations.

Now Muscat has been installed as a co-founder of the Marigold Foundation through a nominal €100 endowment, which will give her the authority to appoint persons of her choice to the board of the Foundation.

Apart from assistants who have been by her side in the last years, Muscat appointed her husband’s long-time aide Mark Farrugia as a representative on the foundation’s board of administrators. Like Muscat herself, Farrugia had been by the side of former Labour leader Alfred Sant as the party’s media coordinator.