Prime Minister Robert Abela will wait for the final verdict by Parliament’s Standards Committee before considering any steps against Education Minister Justyne Caruana.

The PM will not consider temporary measures as the report by the Standards Commissioner is ‘not conclusive’ he said.

Commissioner for Standards in Public Life George Hyzler had found that the awarding of a €15,000 contract to Daniel Bogdanovic by Education Minister Justyne Caruana amounted to an “abuse of power” by the Education Minister.

In his report, published after a unanimous decision by the Standards Committee on Tuesday morning, the Commissioner said that Caruana had breached ethics by “giving preferential treatment” to Bogdanovic by giving him a direct order contract which he was “neither qualified nor competent enough to carry out.” Hyzler also noted that a concerted effort was made for Bogdanovic’s incompetence for the role to be hidden because the work related to the contract was carried out by someone else – Paul Debattista, one of Caruana’s ministry consultants.

Abela said that now that the report has been published, the next stage is for the committee to decide whether to adopt the report or not and if it does, to decide on what sanctions to issue.

He said that a report by the Standards Commissioner is not conclusive and this emerges from the law. “We either respect the rule of law or not. Let’s let the process conclude and once it does one can take decisions. “

He added that he had stopped the contract once he had gotten to know of it.

Regarding his decision not to take temporary measures until then, as he had done in Rosianne Cutajar’s case, he said that the difference is that in that situation Yorgen Fenech was involved.