Minister ran up Dubai hotel drinks bill with his private secretary, Dana Farrugia
It emerges from a report in the Times of Malta today that when the Minister for the Economy, Chris Cardona, ran up a 700-euro drinks bill in his hotel room in Dubai, he was with his private secretary, Dana Farrugia.The newspaper uses her married name, Bonnici, but she split with her husband soon after going to work for Cardona, with her husband reportedly turning up at the Ministry building once to make a scene because of his suspicions.
There was another person with them: the Minister’s chief of staff, Mario Azzopardi, who is also the Minister’s business partner in a building development company, and who owns some shabby boutiques in Birkirkara and Hamrun, Pardi and Scruples.
Azzopardi is a friend and fellow operator of Cardona before he is his ministerial chief of staff, and the two are usually found drinking together at bars in Valletta, most notoriously The Stable in Sappers Street. The photograph below shows the Economy Minister with Mario Azzopardi, swinging towards The Stable on a workday afternoon.
“Drinks in Dubai are expensive”, the Minister told the Times of Malta, but that’s hardly the issue here. Whether they spent €7 or €700 on their personal drinks, they still abusively palmed them off on the taxpayer. But the far more pressing matter is the question of why the Economy Minister is drinking so heavily, and why his relationship with his chief of staff and private secretary crosses all professional boundaries, to the point where they are drinking (a great deal) in a hotel room together.
The other photograph below shows the Economy Minister driving his own official ministerial car, which is heavily dented and scraped on the side facing the camera, with Dana Farrugia in the passenger seat. The picture was taken in Floriana heading towards Valletta on a workday at 9am, last June. There are several questions to be asked here, foremost of which are why the minister wasn’t using his chauffeur, whether he collected his private secretary from her home and if he did so, why, whether she spent the night with him in the Portomaso flat which businessman Silvan Fenech lent him for a year after his wife threw him out, or whether he spent the night at her home.
Nobody cares whether the Minister is having sex with a woman who is not his wife at this stage when he is separated and about to be divorced for the second time. He is technically a free man in that respect. But the public-interest issue is this: that we need to be clear on the matter of whether he is using public money to fund his escapes, and whether Dana Farrugia travels with him as his private secretary or his girlfriend.
The public can be expected to pay for the former but not for the latter.
Chris Cardona is also the Labour Party’s deputy leader, having replaced Konrad Mizzi, who in turn briefly replaced Toni Abela, this year.
The Minister for the Economy swings his way to The Stable in Valletta’s Sappers Street with his chief of staff, boutique-owner Mario Azzopardi, on a weekday afternoon earlier this year.
Photograph taken last June, showing the Economy Minister driving his heavily dented official car in the direction of his office, at 9am, with Dana Farrugia in the passenger seat.
