Former Labour MEP put on the state payroll

Former Labour MEP Claudette Abela Baldacchino has been put on the state payroll as an adviser to Family Minister Michael Farrugia.

(Family Minister Michael Farrugia is divorced and living with a woman young enough to be his daughter, who he has had put on the state payroll too, at Malta Freeport, after leaving his wife and children for his personal assistant when he was a minister in Alfred Sant’s cabinet, and then leaving her too for the woman he is with now.)

Ms Abela Baldacchino was facing prosecution for fraud when she was allowed, controversially, to contest the casual elections to fill a vacant MEP seat in 2013. She was elected, but then did not contest again last year.projet

Her election meant the investigation was halted because, as a member of the European Parliament, she had immunity. When she ceased to have immunity, the investigation carried on and remains ongoing.

The fraud charges were not investigated in Malta but in Brussels. Ms Abela Baldacchino used to travel regularly between Malta and Brussels as the Labour Party representative on an EU-related committee. She had a flight allowance and would fly economy but claim for business class tickets, pocketing the difference.

There seem to be other issues, too. Only five or six years ago, Ms Abela Baldacchino was very slim, buzzing with energy and really quite attractive. But her extreme deterioration in the space of just a couple of years has been truly remarkable, as she has ballooned to the point where you can no longer call it ‘putting on weight’ and just generally fallen to pieces. There is clearly something very wrong, but the government isn’t there to solve its friends’ problems by putting them on the state payroll with spurious appointments as advisers.