Mizzi Liang retains her envoy’s salary in ‘reactivated’ Shanghai posting

Malta Enterprise has retained a financial package for Sai Mizzi Liang that is similar to the original one paid to her in 2014, according to a spokesperson for the investment corporation.

When asked what Mizzi Liang’s financial package will be, Malta Enterprise said that her contract had already been tabled in parliament in 2014: a €13,000 monthly payout that included various perks and allowances.

Together with a salary of more than €73,000 a year, more than half of which is non-taxable, in 2014 Sai Mizzi also received a representation allowance of €3,261 a year; a child allowance of almost €3,000 a year; a fully paid residence; an official car with fully paid expenses and fuel; and the full reimbursement of the use of her mobile phone.

She was also entitled for payment of private schooling for her children – up to €18,783 a year; a 90 per cent reimbursement of medical, dental, and ophthalmic care for all members of her family; a one-time settling-in and outfit allowance; and 15 free flight tickets between Malta and Beijing for all members of her family, 10 of them being business class.

The total amount per year worked out at a little less than €160,000.

Mizzi Liang was reappointed trade envoy having answered to a new public call for applications; her three-year tour in Shanghai came to an end in August 2016, having been controversially appointed without a public call as soon as Labour was elected to power – which made meritocracy a key plank of their political platform.

She was later made diplomatic envoy.

Her husband, Konrad Mizzi, has since then lost his nomenclature as energy minister over revelations that he had opened a secret offshore company in Panama, but he retains responsibility for energy affairs as a “minister without portfolio within the Office of the Prime Minister”.

It is clear that there was internal opposition to have Mizzi Liang retain her diplomatic post: Foreign Minster George Vella appointed a new consul general in Shanghai, Ruth Farrugia, a former consul general in Toronto, Canada, as soon as Mizzi Liang's trade envoy contract ended.

In February 2016, when Konrad Mizzi was elected Labour deputy leader for party affairs amid the first claims of his secret offshore company, he said his wife’s contract would come to an end in August 2016.

Work done by Sai Mizzi Liang

Malta Enteprise also furnished MaltaToday with a list of Mizzi Liang’s milestones, which included a ‘medium-term’ government plan with China signed by both countries’ PMs; bringing Huawei to Smart City; establishing contacts for a logistics centre; exploring collaborations on financial services and investment funds; promoting tourism in China; seeking Chinese partners for the Malta Stock Exchange; meeting manufacturing operators who are interested in Malta; bringing Jiangsu health authorities to expand the Maltese Traditional Chinese Medicine Health Centre to target medical tourism; and other consul operations.