Speaker throws out David Thake's breach of privilege complaint against Clayton Bartolo over VAT issue

David Thake's breach of privilege complaint against Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo was thrown out by Speaker Anglu Farrugia on Wednesday over a technicality.

Bartolo claimed in a speech that Thake's companies were not eligible to benefit from the COVID-19 tax deferral scheme since they had tax arrears.

Farrugia said Thake's complaint was not filed at the first opportunity as dictated by parliamentary rules. In this case, the first opportunity was the day Bartolo delivered his speech, and so there were no grounds for an investigation. He cited a number of rulings on similar complaints to justofy his decision.

Addressing the plenary on Monday, Bartolo said Thake's two companies should not have benefitted from the tax scheme.

“The truth is that none of these companies can enjoy aid under the scheme,” he said referring to Thake, whose companies Vanilla Telecoms and Maltashopper Ltd owe some €270,000 and €550,000 in VAT arrears respectively.

“Under the scheme’s guidelines, a company that has a pending tax bill that predates COVID-19 cannot benefit from the scheme. Thake’s company has €175,000 from before COVID-19, and another company is 10 years behind on its annual accounts,” Bartolo told the House.

Thake has suspended himself from the PN parliamentary group after asking the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life to investigate any ethics breach resulting from his two business companies being in arrears for VAT.

Thake also resigned from the Opposition’s shadow cabinet.

On Monday Thake blamed cash flow problems for the outstanding VAT payments his telecoms company had accumulated.

“When you are faced with issues of cash flow, and you have employees, you are faced with decisions, and this is a situation every self-employed or company director is faced with,” Thake said.

READ ALSO: Thake blames cash flow problems for outstanding VAT: ‘I chose to pay my employees’