Minister tells Speaker Air Malta chairman takes additional €10,000 in director’s fee

Finance minister Clyde Caruana has sought to limit the damage of an ethics complaint against him over having misled Parliament, by writing to the Speaker with details about the salary of Air Malta chairman and CEO David Curmi.

In the letter, Caruana has now clarified that apart from his monthly €21,500, Curmi also takes home an additional €10,000 annually as a director’s fee.

Clyde Caruana made the clarification in a letter to the Speaker of the House, the Standards Commissioner for Public Life and the media.

Caruana said he was informed by Curmi on Thursday that he also received a director’s fee of €10,000 every year.

He denied having misled parliament.

Curmi was engaged to lead Air Malta in January 2021, right before a massive restructuring effort to stave off bankruptcy and reduce the national airline’s workforce by half and stop unprofitable routes.

The independent candidate Arnold Cassola has called for an ethics investigation into accusations that finance minister Clyde Caruana lied when he denied to the press that Air Malta chairman David Curmi was paid a €250,000 salary.

“This kind of salary is unheard of, particularly when so many Maltese people, mainly unemployed and pensioners, are not even making ends meet by the end of the month due to the rising price of food and medicine,” Cassola said in his complaint to the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life.

Cassola said he was requesting an investigation into Caruana’s denial of the salary, and asked the Commissioner to investigate as to how “ethical” was Curmi’s salary for a state company chairman.

A Freedom of Information request by The Shift revealed that Curmi was being paid €21,500 a month for his three-year role as chairman of the national airline.

Yet Caruana did not list the salary when submitting to the House all the salaries of the appointees under his purview: instead, he stated in the document tabled in the House that there was no remuneration for Curmi.