How the Prime Minister and Phyllis Muscat splash other people’s money about: €19 million on CHOGM and migration summit

Another day, another scandal: today’s is the news that the Prime Minister and his boating/travelling companion, Mrs Phyllis Muscat of Mellieha, the face-cream guru, splashed out an utterly shocking €19 million on the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and on the EU-Africa Migration Summit that same month.

The Prime Minister had leapt in to offer to host both when nobody else wanted to – something that Mr Sorr U Geddes would never have done if he were spending his own money. But because he wasn’t spending his own money, it was no expense spared and his buddy Phyllis got €19 million to play with.

She spent a scandalous €3.42 million on “professional services and personal emoluments” – including her own salary and those of key members of her staff for weeks and months after the meeting had come and gone. She herself was paid for a full four months after the meeting ended in November, receiving her full salary, perks and benefits until the end of March.

They even put the Prime Minister’s corrupt chief of staff’s crony, Adrian Hillman – at the time managing director of Allied Newspapers and Progress Press – on the payroll as chairman of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Business Forum, and paid him tens of thousands of euros for swanning around networking for himself and his secret BVI outfits.

Many friends of Labour, Super One apparatchiks and Muscat inner circle cronies were put on the payroll, doing everything from licking envelopes to organising a ‘hamallafest’ show for the opening night. Sunita Mukhi bags were bought for the ladies, a vast tent was put up at Hagar Qim and never used, dinner and lunches were organised, and hundreds of people were engaged as temporary drivers.

And then more recently, we found out that the 400 costumes for the opening night ‘spettaklu’ were made in a prison sweatshop by prisoners working from dawn into the night, who were left unpaid until the newspapers picked up the story and went for it.

Almost €6 million were spent on hotel bed-nights, lunches, dinners and other “hospitality” for the few nights of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the Migration Summit. “Information services” for both – whatever those may be cost a whopping €3.65 million. And land-based transport for both summits cost over €2 million – cars, drivers, coaches, and fuel.

The cost of the hideous ‘Migration Knot’ in Castile Place – which amounts to roughly another quarter of a million – is not included in the figures released by the government today.

Nor is Muscat’s much-vaunted donation of €250,000 of Other People’s Money to the EU Migration Trust Fund on that occasion. He spent €19 million on two meetings and then gave a quarter of a million to help desperate people.

Phyllis Muscat with Keith Schembri