Malta’s former Consul in Shanghai, Aldo Cutajar (pictured) has been accused of money laundering charges after €500,000 ($A823,000) in cash were found at his home.
Mr Cutajar, who is the brother of the head of the country’s Public Service, Mario Cutajar, has been in trouble before.
He had been accused of misappropriation in 2004, when he was a senior official at the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts.
In a statement, the Government said that Aldo Cutajar had never been dismissed from the Public Service and, as such, was not reinstated when his brother was made Principal Permanent Secretary, as some reports had suggested.
The statement said Aldo Cutajar had entered the Public Service in 1989, and faced the misappropriation charge 25 years later.
Mr Cutajar filed a guilty plea on February 2005, and was sentenced to a two-year jail term suspended for four years.
Initially he was to be permanently banned from the Public Service but later that same year the ban was removed and substituted for a forfeit of salary and a warning.
The Government statement emphasised that the decision by the Public Service Commission was endorsed by then-Prime Minister, Lawrence Gonzi.
It said Aldo Cutajar continued working in the Public Service and was transferred to Malta’s Embassy in Beijing in August 2016 and from there to the Shanghai Consulate two years later, a position he held until September 2019.
The statement stressed that Mario was not involved at any stage, and highlighted the Public Service head’s own denial of any links to his brother’s operations.
However, the Malta Chamber for Commerce, Enterprise and Industry urged Mario Cutajar to resign, insisting that he should lead by example and “take the indisputable moral high ground where legitimate doubts or concerns arise”.
“Business expects nothing less from any other Chief Executive in the private sector,” the Chamber said in a statement.
Valetta, 19 August 2020
