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TOP NEWS | Sunday, 26 August 2007

GWU officials’ future on the line after internal purge

Karl Schembri

The fate of two prominent moderate General Workers’ Union officials Michael Parnis and Roberto Cristiano is in the balance following the dramatic resignation of the chairman of the union’s travel and insurance companies, Untours, last week.
Charles Mizzi resigned last Tuesday after 39 years working with the union, in the wake of an investigation into the accounts of the companies he headed carried out by president Salv Sammut and deputy secretary general Gejtu Mercieca.
Mercieca had reported allegations of financial irregularities at the union’s companies to Sammut, after learning that the board had increased Mizzi’s allowance over the last four years from Lm2,000 to Lm6,000 and was using his personal credit card receipts to get repaid for company hospitality expenses.
The two of them then called a general council meeting making their case to union officials about the company board’s decisions, about which the GWU administration was apparently left in the dark.
The Untours board of directors, however, includes two GWU officials representing the union as shareholder of the two companies – Deputy Secretary General (International & Education) Michael Parnis and Section Secretary Roberto Cristiano. Another board member representing GWU is Gaetano Dimech, who is not a union official.
“We were never informed by the board of Mizzi’s increased pay packet and the way he was using his credit card to pay hospitality expenses,” Mercieca said when contacted Friday evening. “I just reported the matter to Sammut upon receiving the allegations about the companies’ accounts – it was my right and duty to do so. And Sammut had a duty to investigate the reports we received, as GWU president.”
Mercieca said that none of the directors informed the union’s administration of the decisions.
“In fact, the increases to Mizzi’s packet were never approved by the shareholders,” he said. “This couldn’t go on unchecked. “The board can’t just decide whatever it wants, it is answerable to the shareholder.”
Now, Parnis and Cristiano are expected to come under the spotlight at the next general council meeting in September, as the issue remains unresolved despite Mizzi’s sudden departure.
About the two official’s future within the union, Mercieca said: “This should not affect their job, it only has to do with the commercial company and MFSA regulations, and any malicious hint that I asked for this investigation out of spite is pure hogwash. I just want things to be carried out as they should, not amateurishly.”
Mizzi however hit back at Mercieca and Sammut, accusing them of being vindictive in his regard in his fiery resignation letter sent to Secretary General Tony Zarb.
“Sammut and Mercieca went behind my back and without the Board of Directors knowing to the Untours Accounts Department, calling in the accountant and the board secretary” to look at the company’s accounts, urging the two employees not to tell anything about what they were doing,” Mizzi wrote.
“No serious chairman or board of directors can ever accept these abuses. According to the MFSA norms regulating commercial companies, the two shareholders’ representatives (you – Tony Zarb – as secretary general and Salvu Sammut as President, not Gejtu Mercieca) had the right to call an Extraordinary General Meeting with the board of directors and discuss what they felt were ‘abuses or abnormalities’.

 



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