Philip Farrugia, the C-Planet managing director at the centre of a personal data leak case, has claimed that he received personal information on everyone in Malta’s electoral register from Ivan Buttigieg, who was CEO of the General Workers Union subsidiary and a Labour Party executive member.

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, which instituted the case with Repubblika, revealed that Farrugia shared the detail during his testimony.

Buttigieg was a Labour Party executive committee and actually contested in the 2013 general election, following decades of strong links to the party.

Farrugia said that Untours Ltd, a GWU subsidiary, had hired him to design management software and that that is the reason Buttigieg had given C-Planet the database. He also acknowledged the IDPC’s finding that the database was used for other C-Planet clients but said that this happened in only one instance.

The IDPC has fined C-Planet €65,000 for failing to prevent the data leak. The company has appealed the decision. Both the appeal and the court case are ongoing.

Back in March 2020, the personal details of over 300,000 Maltese voters were exposed as part of a massive data breach from a local IT company, C-Planet Ltd (IT Solutions), owned by Philip Farrugia, a former production director at One Productions, the media wing of the Labour Party.

The data leak was said to have originated from the Labour Party and had involved a list of over 330,000 voters along with their details such as ID card numbers and voting preferences.