PN MP Jason Azzopardi has apologised for his actions in terms of a hotel stay in Israel which was paid for by a prominent businessman, saying that he should have acted differently.

Azzopardi suspended himself from the PN’s Parliamentary Group after it emerged that a Hilton Hotel stay in Tel-Aviv in March 2017 had been paid for by Ray Fenech, one of the directors of the Tumas Group – a business group which Yorgen Fenech, now alleged mastermind behind the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, was also part of.

Azzopardi has said that when he went to pay for the hotel stay, he found that it had been paid for already.  In exchange for this, he bought Fenech a silver gift in order to make it clear that there were no obligations, he said.

However, Standards Commissioner George Hyzler stated that while he cannot investigate the case as it is from prior to the setting up of his office, a gift given by a political to reciprocate another which he or she had received, does not cancel out the original gift.

“I will not beat about the bush. Nor will I try to hide behind legal arguments”, Azzopardi said in a statement reacting to Hyzler’s statement.

“When the cashier of the Hilton in Tel Aviv told me on my checking out in 2017 that the room charges were already taken care from the Malta side, I should have insisted on paying the full bill and not just pay for taxes and extras.”

“At that particularly difficult moment in my private life I felt that I would have been churlish to refuse the offer made by Mr Ray Fenech and that the buying of a silver gift for Mr Ray Fenech would have been a clear enough sign on my part that no obligation existed. Surely he did not need any modest silverware from me, but it was my way of coming “even””, he said.

He noted Hyzler’s conclusions and thanked him for the clarification.

“Besides my impression that Fenech’s gift was ‘balanced’ by my gift, I note that in March 2017 the Tumas Group did not have any direct interest in any legislation before the House. The Electrogas deal had been sealed a long time before and there were no plans for legislations that could have impacted directly the Tumas Group or its subsidiaries”, Azzopardi observed.

“During the time I spent in Cabinet, or at any point in time, ever, Ray Fenech never asked me for any favour and I am sure he was very conscious that I would not have felt in anyway indebted to him because of his gift not could I proffer any favours as I had been out of government for many years”, he continued.

He noted that the incident had happened in March 2017, by which point he was already one of the biggest critics of the Electrogas deal, adding that it is very clear that the gift did not move his position in any way.

“Undoubtedly I am one of the politicians who to this day vociferously condemn the corrupt Electrogas deal, and day in day out risk my life because of my constant struggle against the cabal that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia. The same cabal which assassinated her is the same one trying to kill me politically. They will fail”, he said.

“Yes, I should have acted differently back then, and I apologise for not doing so but even my strongest critics have to concede that the Tel Aviv incident did not influence one iota the fulfilment of my duty as an MP”, he said before concluding that he will continue to fulfil his duty as an MP.