Rosianne Cutajar: Council of Europe MPs find ‘serious breach’ of rules of conduct

The Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly’s (PACE) committee on rules of procedure has voted that there was a serious breach of its rules of conduct by Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar, when she failed to disclose a conflict of interest in speaking out against a public inquiry into the Caruana Galizia assassination.

Cutajar – who has since resigned her position as Labour MP delegate to the PACE – was accused of breaching ethics by Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt, for her close link with Yorgen Fenech when she used her seat at the Council of Europe to argue against the public inquiry.

The PACE is an assembly of national parliaments’ MPs from all member states of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg (not the European Parliament in Brussels).

The PACE committee will now prepare and publish a report, and inform the Speaker of the Maltese parliament accordingly.

The inquiry came on the back of reports in MaltaToday and the Times that Cutajar had been promised a brokerage fee from the sale of an Mdina palazzo to Fenech, the man accused of having masterminded the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The PACE committe had to decide whether Cutajar had a conflict of interest when signing amendments and speaking against the Omtzigt report in plenary, as well as to ask Cutajar to file her declarations of interest over the past three years.

Cutajar has denied receiving money for her role as the broker in the sale of an Mdina home to Yorgen Fenech. But an investigation by the commissioner for the standards of public life is ongoing. She has since resigned her position as parliamentary secretary.

The PACE did censure Cutajar for failing to submit a declaration of interests since 2018 for four consecutive years, saying this constituted “a minor breach of the Code of Conduct” and decided to inform the Speaker of the Maltese parliament accordingly.