The car which the wife of former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is using is paid for under the terms of the termination package which Muscat received when he resigned from the post of Prime Minister.
The information emerged after a parliamentary question filed by PN MP Claudette Buttigieg to Muscat’s successor Robert Abela.
In her question, Buttigieg asked whether, besides having the services of a car and a chauffeur, Joseph Muscat was also being provided with a second car which is being used by his wife Michelle, and whether this includes the services of a chauffeur and/or security person paid for by the government.
Buttigieg also asked whether the car in question is being rented out or whether it was purchased, and what the financials of such a purchase or rental are.
The Prime Minister replied that Muscat “has the use of a second car which is the same one which he used when he was in his post (without a chauffeur) as per the termination package approved in December 2019.”
Muscat resigned in disgrace in December 2019, with the country seeing street protests every day after the arrest of Yorgen Fenech and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri in relation to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Fenech was later charged with masterminding the murder, while Schembri was released without charge.
As part of his termination package, Muscat had received a one-time payment of €120,000 which was granted to him as part of the Terminal and Transitional Benefit scheme, which was introduced by a Nationalist government in 2004.
All Prime Ministers, Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries and Opposition Leaders are entitled to this benefit upon termination of their employment.
Muscat had confirmed the payment when it was revealed by the media and said that he had renounced other transitional allowances he was entitled to. He also said he had paid €41,633 in tax, and that therefore the remaining balance was €78,495.40.
It was later also revealed that Muscat’s office in Sai Maison is also part of his termination package.
The exact terms of the termination have not been revealed, with media questions and Freedom of Information requests seeking the documents being consistently refused.