Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1016519
NEWS 2 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 19 AUGUST 2018 60 68 78 72 14 33 2 9 18-08-2018 Draw No: 737 WANTED VILLA, HOUSE OF CHARACTER, FARMHOUSE WITH LARGE GARAGE and POOL Areas: Siggiewi , Rabat ,San Pawl tat-Tarġa,Naxxar, Manikata, Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq, Għargħur, Birguma, Kappara, Madliena, Tal-Ibraġ. Budget: €1.3 - 1.5million Other central areas considered. Strictly no agents and brokers. Owners only. Phone/SMS/WhatsApp 7985 1599 Cannabis post: woman arrested over 600g from US MASSIMO COSTA TWO hold-ups have taken place over just two days, with a shop in Cospicua on Friday, and a Floriana pharmacy on Saturday, falling vic- tims to theft. The Cospicua shop, in Triq Santa Tereza, was robbed at knifepoint by a thief who demanded money from the cashier, a 30-year-old woman from Gzira. The thief then escaped the estab- lishment before the police could apprehend him, taking with him an amount of cash. Magistrate Aaron Bugeja was informed of the case, and has ap- pointed various experts to assist him with the ensuing inquiry. Po- lice investigations remain under- way. Meanwhile, on Saturday, Vilhena Pharmacy in Triq Sant' Antnin, Floriana, was also robbed by an armed thief. Informed sources said that the suspect, who is believed to be a foreign national, is on the run from the police. A 29-year-old woman from Swieqi was ar- rested Saturday after the police discovered that she had imported cannabis, by post, from the United States. Police from the Drug Squad, working in collaboration with Customs Depart- ment officials, found a package containing around 600g of cannabis which had been sent in the post from the US to the wom- an. She was subsequently apprehended. The woman is being held in custody, and might be arraigned in court on Sun- day morning, before Duty Magistrate Joe Mifsud, on accusations of having partici- pated in the importation, possession and trafficking of the drug in the past months. Police investigations continue. mcosta@mediatoday.com.mt Hold-ups at Floriana pharmacy and Cospicua shop, both thieves on the run CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Casa claimed that similar allegations were made about "another MEP [which] were shown to be false" and insisted that MaltaToday's assertions had "no basis in reality". He was referring to Roberta Metsola, whose assistant is also her brother-in- law. MaltaToday is informed that Etienne Zammit Guglielmi is married to Casa's sister Dorianne. Casa has published the names of all his Brussels and Malta as- sistants together with an audited state- ment of his general expenditure, as part of PN MEPs' transparency initiative. Only one other Labour MEP does the same. Casa also told MaltaToday he would "take all necessary action permitted by law" should the newspaper publish the story. According to documents seen by MaltaToday, the salaries paid to Casa's assistants are processed by Pro Corpo- rate Services, a firm owned by Nikki Di- mech, the former PN mayor of Sliema who had been impeached by PN coun- cillors over allegations of impropri- ety and kickbacks on a waste collection service. Dimech was cleared of both threatening a public officer and bribery earlier in July 2018. MEPs are free to choose their own as- sistants, but they are barred from work- ing from offices inside their national parties' general headquarters while claiming expenses for the running of the office from the European Parlia- ment's expenses. Last year, Nationalist MEPs denied any wrongdoing after the Labour Party accused them of incorrectly spending part of their monthly €4,000 parlia- mentary allowances on renting office space at the PN's headquarters, rather than on local constituency offices. The MEPs replied that the rental agree- ment was with Media.Link, a company owned by the PN. According to EU rules, European funds "may not be used for the direct or indirect funding of other political parties." But according to Transparency Inter- national EU's policy officer Nick Aiossa in comments to Politico on the case, the EP "negligently provides zero over- sight of this allowance… these newest allegations of misuse should be referred to OLAF." Malta's Nationalist MEPs have in the past voted against a proposal obliging MEPs to publish all receipts purchased using the personal allowance. Malta's three labour MPs voted in favour of the plan. It was only in 2008 that MEPs backed a call to stop lawmakers from employ- ing family members, with a generous five-year 'phasing out' period. Accord- ing to the report on the 2006 budget- ary discharge, MEPs agreed that "no relatives of Members be employed" – MEPs from both Malta's Nationalist and Labour parties voted in favour. However, the ban did not stop MEPs from exploiting loopholes in the sys- tem. In 2013 Marie Le Pen employed her 'partner', later MEP Loius Aliot, as an assistant. Nigel Farage had em- ployed his wife since 2006 as a parlia- mentary assistant. When the complete ban entered into force in 2014 it was fellow UKIP MEP Raymond Finch who hired her to be his parliamentary as- sistant. And several Latvian MEPs have employed each other's relatives as par- liamentary interns. sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt MEP denies rules' breach over jobs for uncle and brother-in-law as local assistants David Casa