Commissioner for Standards in Public Life George Hyzler has 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, 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.

This fact, Hyzler said, was purposely hidden in testimony given to him.

Within the report, both Caruana and Bogdanovic denied that they were romantically involved, instead using the term “friendship”, but Hyzler deemed the relationship close enough to constitute a violation of the code of ethics.

Bogdanovic was contracted by the Education Ministry in order to draft a report on ways to improve the National Sport School.

The final report on this, entitled ‘Assessment, Review and Recommendations for National Sports School: A Proposal to Minister for Education’ was published on 23 March this year and listed Bogdanovic as the author.

However, a lengthy investigation into the matter by Hyzler ultimately proved that Bogdanovic had not written the report himself – despite claiming that he had.

Hyzler said that Bogdanovic appeared to be unsure of parts of the report he had supposedly written when he was asked about them.

One particular instance sees the terms of reference of the study say that Malta should be compared to sports schools in other countries, particularly in Cyprus.  Bogdanovic insisted that the inclusion of Cyprus was his idea, but could not answer on how many times Cyprus was mentioned in the report.

“I know I wrote Cyprus, I know I mentioned Cyprus, I know I mentioned,” Bogdanovic told Hyzler, although the Standards Commissioner then notes that the former footballer became doubtful as to whether he had actually written the country into the report.

Cyprus in fact is mentioned nowhere in the report, Hyzler points out.

It later transpired – only after Hyzler had gained limited access to the former footballer’s government emails – that Ministry consultant Paul Debattista had written the report himself.

Caruana, Hyzler said, was copied into all email correspondence between the two.

Bogdanovic was paid €5,900 for supposedly authoring the report, while a second payment of €9,500 was stopped, with the contract becoming public knowledge by then.

 

Hyzler recommended that the committee should reflect on whether his report should be referred to the Commissioner for Police to see whether other people mentioned in the report should be investigated, to the Principal Permanent Secretary to consider revisions to Cabinet’s procedure manual, and to the Permanent Secretary of the Finance Ministry to consider changes to the process of approval of direct orders.

In a sitting on Tuesday morning, the members of the committee – PN MPs Karol Aquilina and Therese Comodini Cachia, PL MPs Edward Zammit Lewis and Glenn Bedingfield and the Speaker Anglu Farrugia – all agreed that Hyzler’s report should be published.

A discussion on the exclusion of certain personal details which do not have anything to do with the subject of the report resulted in an agreement that two particular sentences in the lengthy report should not be published.

Bedingfield expressed his disappointment that the document had been leaked to the media, though Aquilina rebuked the implication by saying that it was Labour’s side of the table which had leaked the report.