Compare and contrast: Michael Falzon/Bank of Valletta; Carmelo Abela/HSBC

Michael Falzon (parliamentary secretary for Lands, the MEPA and the Simplification of the Bureaucratic Process) and his very golden handshake from the Bank of Valletta are big in the news.

The Home Affairs Minister, Carmelo Abela, is a bank employee too – with HSBC – so I thought I would find out the terms of his parting from the bank and whether it is temporary or not.

Carmelo Abela stayed on the payroll at HSBC after Labour came to power and appointed him government whip. So for almost two years, until he replaced the corrupt Police Minister Manuel Mallia last December, the government whip went to work every day at HSBC Bank.

When Abela was appointed to the cabinet, he applied to his employers at the bank for leave without pay for the remaining three years of this legislature, and was granted it.

I am told that this is in line with the bank’s policies and its collective agreement.

Abela is probably now kicking himself that he wasn’t employed by the Bank of Valletta.

One of his former colleagues at HSBC told this website: “To be frank, we were all hoping that Carmelo would be made a minister, because for the two years or so that he was party whip, he didn’t contribute much to our business and did little more than attend to party/government business on his government-supplied laptop and iPhone. But as his grade was only clerical, he wasn’t really costing us that much either.”