Labour Party international secretary employed by ambassador to Azerbaijan for ‘special projects’

Marc Vella Bonnici and the prime minister

The Labour Party’s international secretary, Marc Vella Bonnici, who is also the mayor of Haz-Zabbar, is employed with Malta’s (non resident) ambassador to Azerbaijan, John Debono, to “take care of special projects connected with Malta and Azerbaijan”.

Marc Vella Bonnici’s father, Joe, is chief of the government’s new passport-and-ID-processing organisation, Identity Malta. He also sits alongside John Dalli’s daughter, Claire Gauci Borda – who came to prominence recently when a major Ponzi scheme was uncovered in which she aided the transfer of funds from US investors to her company account in Malta – on the board of Crystal Finance. Crystal Finance is owned by Alfred Mifsud, deputy governor of the Central Bank, with the ‘silent’ involvement of John Dalli, whose interests Gauci Borda represents on the board.

Claire Gauci Borda’s husband, Adrian, and the ambassador to Azerbaijan, John Debono, are cousins. Debono’s mother, whose surname was Gauci Borda, is a sister to Adrian’s father.

Debono owns companies involved in a wide range of interests, including the billboard company which provided free services to the Labour Party for its general election campaign.