Incoming Labour government asked whether Richard Cachia Caruana would work for Muscat

A few days after the general election, Prime Minister Muscat’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, rang Lou Bondi and made him an offer to go on the public payroll as consultant to Valletta 2018 – the organising body for the city’s stint as European Capital of Culture.

But following stiff opposition put up by the new chairman Jason Micallef, Bondi was instead appointed to the newly created shell Committee for National Festivities and given a €54,000-a-year contract as Prime Minister Muscat’s consultant on ‘national celebrations’.

However, what nobody knows – but I can now reveal – is that when Keith Schembri, who since last February has been embroiled in a massive corruption scandal, rang Lou Bondi to offer him a job, he also asked him whether he thought Richard Cachia Caruana would be interested in working for the Labour government as they wanted to make him an offer.

Schembri asked Bondi to put out feelers on the government’s behalf, and Bondi duly rang Richard Cachia Caruana as the commissioned intermediary for the Labour government. I do not know the nature or contents of the exchange which followed, but both can easily be deduced from the fact that Keith Schembri did not contact Cachia Caruana with an offer once Bondi had reported back to him.

Only a few months earlier, Muscat’s party had organised a mise-en-scene vote in parliament, along with government MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, against Cachia Caruana which led to his resignation as Malta’s permanent representative in Brussels. He has remained a target of the Labour Party/government-sponsored media until today.

I know all the above from Lou Bondi himself, who rang me at the time to ask me what I think. I told him that I was appalled and aghast, and we haven’t spoken since.

Keith Schembri, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff

Lou Bondi, the Prime Minister’s consultant on ‘national celebrations’, who is paid €54,000 a year for a few hours work a week and no responsibility, when government heads of important departments are paid €55,000 a year.

Richard Cachia Caruana: Muscat’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, used Lou Bondi as an intermediary to find out whether Cachia Caruana would work for the incoming Labour government.