Battle between Education Minister and ex CEO hots up as lawyer says to Minister: “Bring it on”

The battle between the Education Minister, Evarist Bartolo, and Philip Rizzo, who resigned two days ago from the post of CEO of the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools, the government agency which manages a budget of many millions to build and refurbish state schools, has intensified, with Rizzo’s lawyer now saying to Bartolo: “Bring it on.”

Rizzo has accused the Minister of failing to take action about corruption in schools contracts, in which his electoral vote-canvasser, Edward Caruana, was involved, and which Rizzo alerted him about last April, a few weeks after he became CEO.

Rizzo, who had begun his career as a trained auditor, immediately noticed odd goings-on in the management of direct orders and tenders for school infrastructural equipment and realised that money was being kicked back or otherwise diverted.

He says he reported the matter to the Education Minister as soon as he found out what had been happening. That was in April.

By August, the Minister had still failed to take action, he said. Rizzo found himself under tremendous pressure, took prolonged absence of leave from work because of illness, and finally took the matter to the police himself on a personal basis, and to the Permanent Commission Against Corruption.

Then he sent a formal letter of resignation to the permanent secretary at the Education Ministry, Joe Caruana, whose brother is the alleged perpetrator of the criminal acts.

It has to be emphasised that Edward Caruana, who Rizzo has accused of criminal acts of corruption involving public funds, is Evarist Bartolo’s electoral vote-canvasser. Bartolo placed him personally in the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools, in a position to handle director orders and deal with tenders and public funds (he is head od procurement), when he was made Education Minister in 2013. He is the Minister’s ‘trusted person’.

From the outside looking in, it is a legitimate suspicion that he was placed there precisely for reasons of graft and that the Minister who put him there, and the permanent secretary who is his brother, could be in on it too. No wonder Evarist Bartolo voted in favour of Konrad Mizzi in the confidence vote brought in parliament.

Remember him pretending to be horrified about Tonio Fenech’s clock?