Gozo minister scandal: Bogdanovic showed no knowledge of report he ‘authored’

Daniel Bogdanovic was contracted in January last year by Education Minister Justyne Caruana to prepare a study for a reform of the National Sports School.

The three-month assignment would earn Bogdanovic, a former footballer, €15,000.

It so happens that Bogdanovic and Caruana are very close friends and it was she who suggested his name for the study.

The contract was eventually cut short in March when MaltaToday revealed how Bogdanovic was awarded the direct order for a job he was unqualified for.

Paul Debattista (right) with education minister Justyne Caruana

But now, an investigation by Standards Commissioner George Hyzler has uncovered far more serious shortcomings, which may also have criminal implications.

One of the most glaring findings in Hyzler’s report, which was published yesterday by parliament’s ethics committee, is the fact that Bogdanovic had no, or very little input in the report that was submitted in draft format when the contract was terminated.

Hyzler says that email logs obtained from the Malta Information Technology Agency show that it was the minister’s consultant, Dr Paul Debattista, who wrote the report for Bogdanovic.

Minister copied in email exchanges

In their testimony before Hyzler, Debattista and Bogdanovic did their best to try and hide this fact. But it was evident that Bogdanovic had no knowledge of the contents of the report when quizzed about aspects from it by Hyzler.

Despite saying he carried out the research for the report, Bogdanovic did not remember documents written by Radtke, OFSTED and Lavallee, which were quoted in the report.

Bogdanovic had also testified that he asked for Cyprus to be included along other countries in the terms of reference where they called for a comparative study with other countries. However, while Bogdanovic told Hyzler he mentioned Cyprus a few times in the report, the country was not even mentioned once.

These are just two instances flagged by Hyzler that prompted him to ask for the emails exchanged between Debattista and Bogdanovic.

“The evidence at hand includes no sign of Mr Bogdanovic’s contribution apart from having sent out the questionnaires to students created by Debattista, sent requests for information to the head of the sports school on instructions from Debattista,” Hyzler wrote.

In most of the emails exchanged between the minister’s consultant and Bogdanovic, Justyne Caruana was in copy and so was constantly informed of what was happening.

Ghost writing invoices, CV

Debattista was undoubtedly the ghost writer of the report to which Bogdanovic put his name to and for which he was paid one instalment of €5,900.

A second invoice sent out to the treasury by Debattista after the contract was terminated listed works that Bogdanovic did not do himself. This invoice was not paid.

But Debattista’s ghost writer status also extended to the production of the invoices Bogdanovic had to issue for payment.

Hyzler says Debattista lied to him when testifying that he asked Bogdanovic to send him an invoice for the amount of €5,000 plus VAT for the work done in January and February 2021.

Email exchanges show that it was Debattista who prepared the invoice and sent it to Bogdanovic to sign.

Even before the report started being prepared, Debattista also wrote the CV for Bogdanovic. On 12 January 2021, Debattista sent an email with the subject line, ‘Attached is the CV’, to Daniel Bogdanovic. The attachment was a draft CV for Bogdanovic.

This email to Bogdanovic was sent on the same day that Debattista wrote to the permanent secretary in the education ministry, Frank Fabri, to inform him that an expert was identified for the sports school study.

Hyzler noted that this email to the perm sec was sent when Debattista should have already analysed Bogdanovic’s CV and based his decision on it.

“It appears that instead of asking Mr Bogdanovic for a CV as he testified, Dr Debattista wrote it up himself for him or at least helped him prepare it,” Hyzler reported.

‘I am old school’

A copy of the draft report supposedly authored by Bogdanovic was handed to Hyzler by Fabri in PDF format. However, the file was a collection of scans rather than a soft copy document prepared on Word and saved as PDF.

This raised Hyzler’s eyebrows and when he queried about this, Debattista insisted that he was only handed a hard copy of the sports report, which he then scanned and forwarded to the perm sec.

Bogdanovic’s defence as to why he had no electronic copy of the report was that he is “old school”.

“I am old school. I prefer to, to see everything in front of me… I used to put everything on the laptop and transfer to USB. That is how I work, that is how I am… I put everything on the USB and then the USB, I printed everything,” Bogdanovic replied.

This did not convince Hyzler, who concluded that the testimony given to him by Debattista and Fabri was intended to try and hide the fact that the report was not compiled by Bogdanovic.

Frank Fabri should not have signed contract

Fabri, as the guardian of the public purse in the ministry, was also lambasted for signing on the Bogdanovic contract.

“In my view, Frank Fabri’s obligation was not to sign the contract, not to sign it and then make elaborate arguments to try and justify it,” Hyzler said.

From the testimony collected in the investigation, Hyzler said Bogdanovic acted like a messenger in the ministry doing photocopies, helping out on preparations for press conferences, and driving people around. “This jarred with his appointment to carry out a study for a reform of the National Sport School,” Hyzler said.

On the intimate relationship between the minister and Bogdanovic, Hyzler said that irrespective of what type of relationship the pair had by their own admission they were long-time friends.

“It is my view that this friendship between the minister and Mr Bogdanovic is enough to trigger ethical considerations based on the code of ethics… it is for this reason that the testimony of Minister Caruana and Mr Bogdanovic about their friendship is enough for this investigation to proceed,” Hyzler said.

Preferential treatment

Hyzler concluded that Caruana breached ministerial ethics when she accorded “preferential treatment” in the award of the lucrative contract to Bogdanovic.

He also suggested that his findings be passed on to the police for criminal investigation.

It is now up to the MPs on the ethics committee to decide how to proceed on Hyzler’s investigation.

So far, Caruana remains a minister and yesterday Prime Minister Robert Abela insisted he will wait for the parliamentary committee to conclude its work before taking any action against his minister.

The Opposition has called on Abela to “immediately” remove Caruana from her post.