Education Minister axes consultant who manipulated Council of Europe rapporteur’s Wikipedia page

Owen Bonnici has terminated the contract of an Education Ministry consultant, who used a work computer to edit the profile page of a Council of Europe rapporteur.

MaltaToday is informed that an internal investigation showed that the consultant used a computer assigned to the Education Ministry to change Pieter Omtzigt’s Wikipedia profile sometime last year.

Omtzigt was the Council of Europe’s rapporteur on the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case. Omtzigt had released a damning report last year that prompted the European body to demand a public inquiry into the murder.

Education Minister Owen Bonnici terminated the consultant's contract immediately

MaltaToday is informed that the newly-sworn-in Education Minister took immediate action to terminate all consultancy jobs the individual had with the ministry after a technical evaluation showed that he had manipulated Omtzigt’s profile to read that the Dutch rapporteur had paid Russia for false information.

The case goes back to October last year when Omtzigt's Wikipedia page was edited. The edits came from a computer, the IP address of which was traced to a Maltese government ministry.

In Parliament, on Tuesday, Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri said that a police investigation concluded that there was no criminal activity involved.

Wikipedia is an open source platform that can be edited by anyone.