Joseph Cuschieri will earn €86,000 as Project Green CEO

Project Green CEO Joseph Cuschieri receives a pay packet of €86,458, MaltaToday has learnt.

He will earn €5,000 more than his predecessor Steve Ellul.

The two-year contract seen by this newspaper following a Freedom of Information request, shows he will be earning a basic salary of €60,000 per annum with additional taxable allowances taking his total pay packet to €86,458 per year.

He is also entitled to a performance bonus that could potentially see his income increase to €95,458.

Perks include a communications allowance of €1,800, an undefined ‘project allowance’ of €10,000, an expense allowance of €10,000 and a car allowance of €4,659.

Cuschieri’s full-time engagement as CEO on a 40-hour week basis started on 19 January 2024 and expires in 2026, although the contract makes reference to 36 months.

Cuschieri’s controversial appointment

Joseph Cuschieri was appointed chief executive of Project Green, the State agency tasked with government’s flagship policy to carry out urban greening projects last month.

He took over from Steve Ellul, who will be a Labour Party candidate for the European Parliament election in June.

The appointment raised eyebrows in light of Cuschieri’s unceremonious resignation from the Malta Financial Services Authority in 2020 following an ethics breach.

Cuschieri left the authority after news emerged in 2020 of a trip he had taken to Las Vegas with then Tumas Group CEO Yorgen Fenech two years earlier.

An internal MFSA review board found that Cuschieri breached ethical guidelines when he went on the all-expenses paid trip with Fenech. The report was only tabled in parliament in March 2023 after the MFSA was ordered by the Data Protection Commissioner to release its findings following a Freedom of Information request.

Cuschieri denied having had a conflict of interest, insisting at the time of the trip he was no longer CEO at the Malta Gaming Authority, which regulated, among others, casinos in which Fenech had a direct interest. Cuschieri, who had just been appointed CEO at the MFSA at the time of the trip, insisted the authority did not regulate any of Fenech's companies.

However, the review board disagreed, insisting that Fenech's vast commercial interests made it very probable that a conflict of interest could arise at some point.