A review of the employment agreement of the Consultant to the Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Tourism Studies

On 28 March 2023, the Chair, Alternattiva Demokratika Partit Demokratiku requested the National Audit Office (NAO) to investigate whether the contract of employment entered into by the Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS) with Hon. Rosianne Cutajar constituted misuse of public funds. The contract between the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) ITS and Hon. Cutajar was dated 2 May 2019. Duties included providing strategic and operational support, establishing performance standards and indicators, acting as a representative of the Institute and facilitating stakeholder management, the drafting and reviewing of financial documents, and enforcing adherence to legal guidelines and internal policies.

Despite the enquiries and review of key documents by the NAO, the need for this engagement could not be traced to any source. This need was not referred to in any strategic report of the Ministry for Tourism or the ITS, was not brought to the attention of the ITS Board of Governors, despite the obligation at law for its involvement in such matters, and was not included in the ITS human resources plan referred to the Board a few weeks after the Consultant was engaged. The review of all Board minutes revealed that the Consultant’s existence and activity remained obscure to the Board throughout the period of employment. The CEO ITS maintained that the need to engage a consultant, the functions and duties to be assigned, and remuneration payable were discussed with the Institute’s Executive Management Office; however, no documentation substantiating that claimed was provided.

The NAO established that the employment of the Consultant breached regulations governing recruitment, be it in terms of ordinary public sector employment or individuals engaged on a trust basis. The dissonant perspectives of the CEO ITS and the Chief of Staff to the Minister for Tourism instil doubt as to the veracity of their assertions. The CEO ITS contended that after “consulting with the Ministry”, Hon. Cutajar was deemed the idoneous candidate. On the other hand, the Chief of Staff claimed that the input of the Minister’s Secretariat did not extend “beyond a mere notification of the vacancy to a candidate, or a potential candidate to the employer.” Compounding matters was the vacuous recollection of the Minister for Tourism. Regardless, the ITS, as employer, was ultimately responsible for the failures in authorisation, substantiation and reporting that arose from its bypassing of all regulations that ought to have ensured proper oversight and governance of employment through public funds.

Several sources of evidence indicated that the contract of employment was backdated. The draft contracts exchanged between the CEO ITS and the Chief of Staff to the Minister for Tourism post-employment as well as the significant arrears paid in the Consultant’s first salary lend credence to this understanding. Although the CEO ITS and the Consultant sought to explain these anomalies, the convergence of the multiple sources of evidence amplifies the NAO’s concerns that the contract was backdated by at least one month and therefore irregular.

Although Hon. Cutajar’s professional and political experience aligned with certain tasks assigned, of concern was that the responsibility to draft and review financial documents and to ensure the ITS’s adherence to legal and ethical requirements remained aspects of work for which she had no expertise.

While the NAO concedes that certain duties and functions may not result in documentation, generally, knowledge-based work generates evidence of activity, be it correspondence exchanged, reports drawn or reviewed, and records of events and meetings. In the case of the Consultant, the dearth of evidence casts doubt on what work was carried out. When seen in the context of earlier points raised by this Office regarding the irregular nature of this employment, the poor output, if any, of the Consultant aggravates concerns of negligence in the disbursement of public funds by all involved in this contrived engagement.

Hon. Cutajar resigned from her post as Consultant on 13 January 2020, when appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Equality and Reforms. During her engagement, Hon. Cutajar earned a gross income of €19,195. Aside from her engagement with the ITS, in 2019, Hon. Cutajar earned income of €43,777 from her role as Commissioner for Simplification and Reduction of Bureaucracy and €26,165 as a Member of Parliament. Aggregated with the €18,190 earned in 2019 as Consultant, the gross earnings amounted to €88,132. This income exceeded the €74,000 declared to Parliament by Hon. Cutajar by €14,132.