PN Calls For Justyne Caruana Report To Be Made Public And For Minister To Be Sacked If She Breached Ethics
The Nationalist Party has appealed for a Standards Commissioner report into claims that Education Minister Justyne Caruana gave her close associate Daniel Bogdanovic a €15,000-a month contract, to be published immediately.
The party also insisted that Caruana should be sacked should it transpire that an ethics breach did in fact take place.
“If there has been a breach of ethics, Justyne Caruana should resign immediately or be made to resign by Robert Abela, who has tolerated a lack of standards for far too long,” the PN said.
“As Education Minister, Caruana should be leading by example and not giving €5,000-a-month contracts to her partner.”
Earlier today, the report was handed to the Speaker of the House by the commissioner’s office.
In March, the Shift News revealed that Caruana had granted Bogdanovic, her boyfriend, a three-month contract worth €15,000 to visit government schools and draft recommendations on how to improve the national sports school’s ability to produce elite athletes. The Education Ministry had denied the claims just a month before.
Bogdanovic was an elite athlete in his own right, playing for the likes of Barnsley, Sheffield United and Blackpool in his prime. However, his contract with the Education Ministry raised eyebrows given his lack of pedagogical qualifications and his personal relationship with the Minister.
Prime Minister Robert Abela said he scrapped the controversial contract “as soon as [he] found out about it”. However, the government gazette suggests that Bogdanovic was still paid.
Caruana was reinstated to the Cabinet in November 2020 following a reshuffle. She had returned after being ousted at the start of the year following her now-estranged husband’s links to the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
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