Consultant who penned Bogdanovic report loses post after Caruana resignation

A consultant to former education minister Justyne Caruana, Paul Debattista, has had his contract with the ministry terminated in the wake of the resignation of Caruana.

“Debattista’s contract as person of trust was stopped as what happens to ministerial persons of trust’s contracts when there is a change in minister,” a government spokesperson confirmed. “It is then up to the next minister to choose whether they would like to re-employ him for his services.”

Justyne Caruana resigned from her post as Education Minister on Wednesday on the back of an ethics breach in which she gifted a €15,000 contract to her partner Daniel Bogdanovic.

A damning report by the Standards Commissioner George Hyzler found that Bogdanovic was tasked to carry out a study of the sports school, a job he was unsuitable to do as he had no pedagogical training.

Hyzler found that the report for which Bogdanovic was to be paid €15,000, was actually compiled by Paul Debattista, a consultant to the minister. Email logs obtained from the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) revealed the information.

Hyzler noted that this fact was kept hidden from him when hearing testimony on the case.

Even before the report started being prepared, Debattista also wrote the CV for Bogdanovic. On 12 January 2021, Debattista sent an email with the subject line, ‘Attached is the CV’, to Daniel Bogdanovic. The attachment was a draft CV for Bogdanovic.

This email to Bogdanovic was sent on the same day that Debattista wrote to the permanent secretary in the education ministry, Frank Fabri, to inform him that an expert was identified for the sports school study.

READ ALSO: Justyne Caruana breached ethics, gave boyfriend ‘preferential treatment’ by gifting him lucrative contract

Hyzler noted that this email to the permanent secretary was sent when Debattista should have already analysed Bogdanovic’s CV and based his decision on it.

“It appears that instead of asking Mr Bogdanovic for a CV as he testified, Dr Debattista wrote it up himself for him or at least helped him prepare it,” Hyzler reported.

In his conclusions, he asks MPs to consider whether the findings should be passed on to the police for criminal investigation.

On Friday, civil service head Mario Cutajar told the Times of Malta an internal process has been launched into whether Frank Fabri, broke any rules and if he should face disciplinary measures.

“I can confirm that I have read the report and have already called in the permanent secretary at the education ministry to get his version of events. An internal procedure is now underway to establish the facts, dig deeper and see what happened on a public service basis,” Cutajar said.

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