Speaker Denies Collusion Over Azzopardi’s Tax Returns But Sparks More Questions Than Answers
Speaker of the House Anġlu Farrugia this morning issued a press statement in reaction to a story published by Lovin Malta last night, but his statement has sparked more questions than answers.
Lovin Malta yesterday reported that Prime Minister Robert Abela seems to have been tipped off by the Speaker’s office about the fact that Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi had not yet filed his tax returns for 2018 and 2019.
Abela revealed his hand in the morning of 3rd March when he was being asked by journalists about unrelated allegations being made by Azzopardi. The Prime Minister said there would soon be a big story about Azzopardi which would show him to be “the biggest hypocrite in Maltese politics”. Records show that the comments were given at 11.45am.
Later that afternoon, at 4.44pm, the Speaker’s office replied to One.com.mt’s request for information about tax returns. The Labour-owned media house had filed its official request for information just the day before.
Lovin Malta, which had requested the tax returns back in January, only received them from the Speaker’s office at around 8pm, hours after they were given to One.com.mt.
In his statement today, the Speaker pointed out that the request by Lovin Malta was about around 75 MPs and therefore it took longer to collate. On the other hand, One had only requested the information about six MPs and therefore their request was accepted within 24 hours, as had been done with Times of Malta back in January when it requested the tax returns of one MP.
However, that does not explain how the Prime Minister got to know about the information before it was delivered to One. And it also does not explain the suspicious timing of One’s request for the tax returns, which was coincidentally made just the day before Lovin Malta was due to start receiving the returns for all MPs.
In his statement, the Speaker denied that he or anyone in his office supplied information about an MP to anyone else before notifying the MP.
However, Lovin Malta is informed that the MPs which One made a request about were notified at around 1.55pm which is a good two hours before the Prime Minister fired his warning at Azzopardi.
The Office of the Prime Minister has denied collusion with the Speaker but has not yet provided an explanation for how Abela got to know about Azzopardi’s late returns if not from the Speaker’s office.
Farrugia recently came under fire for voting with government MPs to reject a report by the Standards Commissioner which found former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat guilty of a breach of ethics for the way a press conference in Castille was handled in November 2019.
Azzopardi’s late returns – which he said were the result of his acrimonious marital separation – are being investigated by the Standards Commissioner following a complaint by Jason Micallef, the chairman of One Productions which ironically hasn’t filed its own audited accounts for more than 10 years.
What do you think of the Speaker’s statement?
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