A gift given by a politician to reciprocate another he or she received does not cancel the original gift accepted by the politician, nor exempt him from the code of ethics Members of Parliament must follow, the Commissioner of Standards has ruled.

The commissioner, George Hyzler, was ruling on a request by Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi to investigate his trip to Tel Aviv in 2017, paid for by the Tumas Group. Azzopardi is the lawyer of the Daphne Caruana Galizia family in court proceedings which include the charges against Yorgen Fenech, at the time a director of the Tumas Group.

Hyzler said he cannot investigate the case because the law precludes him from investigating anything that took place before his office was set up.

The commissioner said he was making this declaration independently of whether Azzopardi had really left a gift for the Tumas Group and whether its value was equivalent to the original gift he received.

He said that Azzopardi's decision to put himself before the commissioner is "superfluous" because his availability for such an investigation is "not discretionary or a concession", but ordered by the law which governs the commissioner's office. 

In his report, Hyzler states that the law which governs his office does not preclude him from investigating a case if this is demanded by the person involved; yet, he said he is conscious of the fact that such requests could be made for political reasons or as a publicity stunt, and he said he will not allow his office to be used in this way. Hyzler added that he will consider such requests on a case by case basis and, in this particular occasion, he will not investigate the case.

Hyzler said that he had received an email from Azzopardi on 8 November, referring to an article on the newspaper Illum which reported that he (Azzopardi) had been the guest of the Tumas Group at the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv in March 2017. The original report had listed the date as being in July of that year, but this had later been corrected to March.

Hyzler said that Azzopardi himself had admitted that he had stayed for free at the Hilton Tel Aviv Hotel. 

The Commissioner for Standards does not exclude accepting requests from persons subject to the Act to investigate their own actions, but this does not mean that the Commissioner will investigate actions that occurred before the Act came into force. 

Standard Commissioner's ruling

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Earlier

Standards Commissioner George Hyzler will likely be unable to investigate Jason Azzopardi’s Tel Aviv Hilton stay, paid by the Tumas Group, because the law precludes him from investigating anything that took place before his office was set up.

Azzopardi visited Israel in July 2017 and the Office of the Commissioner for Standards was set up in October 2018.

The trip is also being investigated by the Nationalist Party’s own ethics commission, which is not limited by time-barring.

Azzopardi suspended himself from the PN’s Parliamentary Group after it emerged that his Hilton Hotel stay had been paid for by Ray Fenech, one of the directors of the Tumas Group.

Azzopardi had previously said that he did not remember being given any freebies by the Tumas Group, of which Yorgen Fenech formed part until he resigned earlier this year.

Fenech is charged as being a mastermind in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Azzopardi is representing the Caruana Galizia family in the case against Fenech.

On Sunday, Illum reported that Azzopardi stayed at the Tel Aviv Hilton between the 19 and 24 of July 2017, with everything having been paid for.

When contacted by Illum, Azzopardi said that Yorgen Fenech never gave him anything and that he never asked anything of Yorgen Fenech. He did say that he had asked Ray Fenech, however, to help him find a hotel in Tel Aviv as he had a wedding there, but said that the businessman paying for his stay was surprising and unexpected. The MP said he only found out that his stay had been paid for when he went to check out. He added that he later repaid Fenech with a gift, and thus has no obligations towards him.

Azzopardi’s estranged wife later said that the wedding had actually taken place in March.

The MP later said he had asked Standards Commissioner George Hyzler to investigate. But, judging from previous decisions, Hyzler will likely be unable to investigate the 2017 trip because the law regulating his office states that he can only investigate cases that took place after the office was set up.

On Monday, Azzopardi suspended himself from the party’s parliamentary group and shadow cabinet.

In a statement, the PN said that after discussions with party leader Bernard Grech, Azzopardi informed Grech of his decision to ask the Party’s Ethics, Discipline and Social Media Commission to investigate him in connection with the claims.