Six reasons Jason Azzopardi was wrong to hide his Tumas gift

It’s hard not to view Jason Azzopardi’s Tumas freebie in the light of his zeal in hounding Labour and former PN leader Adrian Delia for their links with Yorgen Fenech, the alleged mastermind of the Caruana Galizia murder.

But back in March 2017 at the time of his Tel Aviv jaunt, no trail yet existed linking Tumas magnate Yorgen Fenech to major corruption cases.

And that means any condemnation of Azzopardi’s behaviour now applies to any, and all, political recipients of favours from big business. So Labour has set new standards for its own MPs by hitting out at Azzopardi.

Robert Abela certainly cannot hold on to any equivalence between Azzopardi’s failure to declare his freebie and those government officials and ministers who kept in contact with Yorgen Fenech after it emerged the Electrogas shareholder was the owner of 17 Black, a secret company linked former energy minister and former chief of staff’s Panama companies. It should have the been obvious for anyone in November 2018 that the 17 Black revelation had cast a dark shadow on how Labour had delivered its main electoral promise in 2013 for a gas plant.

But even despite this crucial distinction, ethical guidelines are meant to avoid obligations politicians may have towards the business class, especially when gifts and favours may return to haunt them at a later date, are left undeclared. If MPs allow themselves to be exposed to retribution and potential blackmail, from this angle Azzopardi’s actions were not only reckless and embarrassing, but also ethically wrong.

1. Sin of omission: Jason Azzopardi did not declare the gift

Azzopardi repeatedly denied receiving gifts from Tumas Group. He was neither upfront nor truthful. This is his major fault as by hiding it Azzopardi seems to acknowledge his own embarrassment.

He had a golden opportunity of coming clean by declaring the receipt of the gift, perhaps not immediately, but before lashing out on others for their connections with the Tumas Group after the 17 Black revelations. He could well have used his own case to make a distinction between connections established before November 2017 and others which continued after that date.

Instead when asked on XTRA whether he had received any gift from Yorgen Fenech’s companies, he replied that he could not remember having received anything from either Fenech or his group of companies. Azzopardi only refreshed his memory after Illum broke the story – a case of Azzopardi evading the truth, and missing the opportunity to set the narrative himself with his own explanations.

Azzopardi should ask himself whether he would have made a fuss had it emerged in 2017 before the 17 Black revelations, that a prominent Labour politician had his hotel stay paid by one of the owners of the power station.

Additionally...  he breached the parliamentary code of ethics because he failed to reject or later declare the gift.

2. Azzopardi raised the bar, but could not resist requesting a favour

Jason Azzopardi raised the bar for himself by expecting others to behave ethically and beyond reproach. But when not under the radar he could not resist benefitting from a connection in the business world for his own personal advantage.

He has been the Opposition’s chief inquisitor not just with Labour but also his nemesis, the former PN leader Adrian Delia, whose position was rendered untenable by his own failure to disclose chats with the Tumas magnate after November 2018.

Like all self-appointed inquisitors, Azzopardi’s reputation depends on practicing what he preaches, so his lack of transparency on himself is bound to backfire on him and his cause.

Of course, Azzopardi had no way to anticipate in 2017 that Yorgen Fenech would be first exposed as the owner of 17 Black and then as the mastermind of Caruana Galizia’s assassination. But Azzopardi had to disclose his ‘gift’ before castring fire and brimstone on government members for their own collusion with Fenech. Moreover, Azzopardi had no qualms in asking a favour from a business group which in 2017 had already established a reputation for wielding influence on the political class, apart from becoming a target for the opposition after 2013. And the timing coincided with revelations that the PN was in the receipt of funding from the DB Group, which then undermined their legitimate concerns on the ITS land transfer. Getting a Hilton freebie from Ray Fenech while his party was reeling from a scandal on its own links to big business, suggests poor judgement on Azzopardi’s part.

3. Although pre-17 Black, the Tumas freebie comes after the Electrogas deal and bank guarantees, Mriehel’s inclusion for high-rise, and a number of controversial planning permits

Surely all those WhatsApp chats, gifts and relationships with Yorgen Fenech became more toxic for politicians after 17 Black was exposed in 2018 (and then that scandal is not even linked to Ray Fenech).

But even before July 2017, the Nationalist Party was already committed to rescind on the Electrogas energy deal and had questioned the legality of a €360 million government guarantee for the project. In September 2016, Simon Busuttil himself himself described the LNG tanker as “a monument of corruption”. In 2015, MP ERyan Callus said the proposal to construct Tumas’s four skyscrapers in Mriehel “stinks of corruption”. Despite these accusations from his own party, Azzopardi had no problem calling up Ray Fenech.

Even before Labour’s election, the Tumas Group benefitted from land use policies which saw the St Julian’s land at Portomaso leased by the State to the developers for €445,000 a year until 2114. It was eventually sold to the developers for €1.8 million in 2006. This is a reminder that the Tumas Group, thanks to its role as a strong player in tourism and the property market, had long wielded influence on both parties.

4. Azzopardi claims he did not expect the stay to be free, but admits asking for help from the Tumas magnate for accommodation instead of searching the web as common mortals usually do before going on holiday

Azzopardi said it was only while checking out that the hotel receptionists said his Tel Aviv bill had been taken care of, and that this came as a surprise. But Azzopardi said he contacted Raymond Fenech asking for help in finding a hotel in Tel Aviv, where he had been invited to attend a wedding. The Tumas Group does not own hotels in Israel – they own the Hilton at Portomaso, so the request was to have the Tumas influence applied in his favour with the Hilton chain elsewhere.

At the very minimum this suggests Azzopardi had no qualms on requesting a favour from a business group, when already a target of his party’s criticism. He had enough familiarity with Ray Fenech to be in a position to request this sort of assistance and for Fenech to feel obliged to pay for the entire hotel stay. His request gave Fenech the opportunity to bestow a gift to Azzopardi, which was not squarely refused or paid back in full.

5. Azzopardi then felt obliged to gift Fenech a silver gift: but this transaction of gifts was never declared in a way which would have cancelled any sense of obligation

Azzopardi thinks he avoided any obligation to Fenech with a silver gift for the Tumas director. Did the value of the gift match the Tel Aviv hotel stay? Why not send a cheque and pay one’s dues in full? Still, the failure to disclose the gift even when asked about it, is the most damning for it undermines his moral high ground. An acknowledged mistake is more easily forgiven than one exposed by the press. And though in 2017 he could have not known the fate of Fenech’s nephew, his past actions are now viewed through the optics of the present.

6. Azzopardi was not conditioned by the gift in confronting Yorgen Fenech, but ethical guidelines are there to to prevent potential conflicts irrespective of the intentions of the actors involved

Azzopardi’s track record as MP and the indomitable lawyer of the Caruana Galizia family suggests the Tumas freebie did not condition him in his political actions. But ethical rules are there to prevent potential conflicts and obligations irrespective of the intentions of those involved. The code of ethics proposed by Standards Commissioner George Hyzler precludes the receipt of any gifts which place ministers and MPs “under an obligation”, while proposing a transparent system through which other legitimate gifts are registered. They also have to register any gifts of the same value, which they bestow to others. The code has still to be approved and therefore Azzopardi will not be judged by Hyzler on the basis of it, but it does suggest that Azzopardi’s behaviour in this case is problematic.

By failing to come clean in the past three years, Azzopardi has no one but himself to blame for giving government officials who received gifts from Fenech an opportunity to turn the tables on the Opposition even if this is being done in a way which obfuscates facts by creating a false equivalence.

Yet the strategy is effective in drawing on a widespread perception that Azzopardi applies a different yardstick for himself than he expects from others. Even though motivated by the opportunistic prospect of a freebie at the Hilton, the MP may well have given the Fenechs the impression that he was willing to play along in the game of gift exchange between the political and business class, which ultimately corrodes Maltese democracy.