Former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi had signed off on the removal of a public service interdiction for Aldo Cutajar after the latter pleaded guilty to misappropriating funds from a government council, the government said in a statement. 

Aldo Cutajar, a Maltese consul in Shanghai, was charged with money laundering on Sunday, with police saying that they had found €500,000 in cash at his home. 

In a statement which the government said was in reaction to false statements being made about Cutajar, after he was hauled to court on Sunday and charged with money laundering, the government issued a number of clarifications. 

The government said that Cutajar first entered the public service in 1989. 

They said that it was in 2004 when he was serving as Senior Principal on the Malta Arts and Culture Council that he was charged in court over accusations of misappropriation of funds amongst others.

On 2 February 2005, Cutajar pleading guilty to those accusations and was handed a two year jail sentence suspended for four years, with a perpetual interdiction, the government said. 

On 22 April 2005, the government said, the Magistrate’s Court decided to remove the perpetual interdiction which it had handed it down itself. 

The Public Service Commission, the governemnt said, investigated the case in terms of the rules of the public service and on 16 June 2005 recommended that the interdiction imposed on Cutajar should be removed as per the Courts’ declaration. 

The Commission said that Cutajar should lose the pay kept during his suspension, and be given a warning. 

The government said that the then Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi agreed with this recommendation and signed off on it on 1 July that year, with Cutajar subsequently working in a number of government ministries. 

“This means that it is not true that Aldo Cutajar was ever sacked from working with the government. Indeed, it is not true either that Aldo Cutajar was ever reinstated with the governemnt, and certainly not that he was allowed back with the government after 2013”, the statement reads. 

On 17 August 2016, Cutajar was sent by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, where he worked at the time, to the Maltese Embassy in Beijing.  The statement reads that the Maltese Security Service gave the ministry all the necessary clearances for this to happen. 

On 1 March 2018, the Foreign Affairs Ministry sent Cutajar to the Shanghai Consulate, a role he held till 7 September 2019. 

The government reiterated that the Principal Permanent Secretary – Mario Cutajar, Aldo Cutajar’s brother – had no connection with any of the aforementioned circumstances, and referred to Cutajar’s statement wherein he said that he had nothing to do with his brother’s operations and that he had made himself fully available to the police. 

“The government is convinced that the independent institutions will be carrying out their work for justice to be done with anyone who broke the law in this case, like in any other cases.”