Tourism Minister refuses to say what they were up to

The Malta Independent has followed up on this website’s report yesterday that the Tourism Minister and Transport Minister had been spotted flying to Istanbul together, and that they flew back together from Ankara (via Munich) yesterday.

The newspaper spoke to Edward Zammit Lewis, who said that they were not there to hold discussions with Turkish Airlines.

“I went on government work to discuss, along with Transport Minister Joe Mizzi, various themes with Turkey. We have tourism relations, relations related to aviation as well as relations related to transport,” he said. He chose not to specify what the meetings were about when pressed and did not say whether discussions dealt particularly with Air Malta.

Meanwhile, I can reveal that the Maria Micallef who was with them, and who had been assumed to be the Air Malta chairman, was in fact Maria Micallef, managing partner of RSM (Malta). Ms Micallef replaced Deo Scerri as managing partner a few months ago. Scerri, who has looked after the Labour Party’s accounts books for more years than anyone cares to remember, was appointed by the government as its representative on the board of the Bank of Valletta within a couple of weeks of Joseph Muscat taking office as prime minister.

Deo Scerri and Maria Micallef handled all the negotiations with the government of Malta, architects and others for Hani Hasan Naji Al Salah, the Jordanian contractor who has been given land at Zonqor Point. He is one of their most important clients. They have incorporated his Maltese companies, which include Sadeen Education Investment Ltd, and those companies are registered to the offices of RSM (Malta) in Mriehel, where they take care of all his correspondence, accounts, and communications with various members of the government.

The other Maria Micallef, who is Air Malta chairman, was seen flying to Athens via Rome yesterday morning.