The ‘Manuel and Codruta’ scandal continues to unfold

This thing began when I read Malta Today’s report some time ago about how the health authorities are suing a ‘Codruta Christian’ – ex Citizenship, Police and Army Minister Manuel Mallia’s wife – for an unpaid hospital bill, and I suddenly realised this means she wasn’t married to him at the time, that the hospital bill was services related to the birth of her children by him, and that the freeloading toad sent his girlfriend to give birth at the state hospital, thinking he could get it for free, rather than to a private clinic where he would have had to pay.

I then looked up her public-record identification numbers and discovered that at some recent point Codruta Christian’s ID card number changed from A for resident alien, to a different number ending in 14 and a letter denoting a Maltese citizen.

The ’14’ denotes the year, which could only have meant that she became a Maltese citizen in 2014, when her husband was the minister responsible for citizenship and could have used the clause in the law which gives the Citizenship Minister discretion in granting citizenship.

I then checked the public records for a marriage certificate and found that Manuel Mallia married his Romanian girlfriend less than three years ago, quite a while after the birth of their twins, which is why she was not entitled to free care at the state hospital.

The Malta Independent on Sunday then followed up on the story, requesting details from the new Citizenship Minister (Carmelo Abela) and from Manuel Mallia because it looked very much like Mallia used his ministerial discretion to make his wife a Maltese citizen.

The replies the newspaper was given were wholly unsatisfactory. David Lindsay, The Malta Independent on Sunday’s editor and the one who wrote the story, is himself a naturalised Maltese citizen – he was born a US citizen – through marriage to somebody who was born Maltese, and he knows exactly how many years the process normally takes and how tortuous it is. And Lindsay more or less grew up in Malta so Manuel Mallia’s excuse that his wife didn’t become a citizen on the basis of her marriage to a Maltese but on the basis that she had been in Malta for 10 years didn’t wash either.

Then Malta Today picked up the story and demanded a copy of Mrs Mallia’s application for citizenship under the Freedom of Information Act. It received the documents with her personal details and the name of her sponsor removed.

But the name of her sponsor is crucial information, so the newspaper has asked for it.

The documents show that Codruta Mallia’s application was whizzed through the system in just nine months, when the normal waiting time is years.