Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/187071
14 News maltatoday, SUNDAY, 6 OCTOBER 2013 CHRISTOPHER EVANS IN THE PRESS CONTINUES FROM PAGE 1 And only this week, he returned to the fore after the BBC reported the Welsh government's flagship £50m biotech investment fund was set to be examined by auditors. The Wales Life Science Investment Fund is in fact chaired by Evans himself. In their dealings with MaltaToday, Evans' solicitors give the impression that Evans' interests in Malta were purely involved with the international field of biosciences. Yet it appears that he was using Malta's attractive financial services base for his companies. Indeed, the BBC reported that this year – precisely on 25 June and 22 July – Evans purchased an additional 24 million shares in the company Reneuron at a cost of around £600,000 via two family trusts, Hookstone Limited and Excalibur Malta Ventures Limited. The Wales Life Science Investment Fund, chaired by Chris Evans and backed with £50m of UK public money, invested £5m in his Guildford-based stem-cell company ReNeuron. The BBC has probed Evans EDWARD SCICLUNA CONTINUES FROM PAGE 1 "From my position in life, I can afford giving five years of service to the country without counting the euros… but obviously I am insulted at the salary a minister gets," Scicluna told MaltaToday when pointing out how government chief executives are paid standard salaries of €65,000. "Cabinet salaries must be reviewed in a proper and pre-announced manner. If we want to attract good people to government, if we want a new generation of good people to govern us, we need to pay higher salaries. They needn't be higher than those in the private sector. Even members of the Obama administration left the private sector for a cut in their salaries to serve their country." Equally, Scicluna says that ministers should also give better declarations of the assets they hold, but says that the system as employed by the House of Representatives is "lousy" and that he is not – as estimated by MaltaToday – the second-highest earning minister of the Muscat government. "The declarations as they stand are lousy, they are not clear. We need something clear, and there is room for improvement. The European Parliament's declaration has guidelines. In our case, if someone declares they hold shares, the question is at what value should they be declared: their market value or the value at which they were bought? It's so uneven, it is unfair." High-earning ministers like Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia declared such sums as €500,000 in cash, while Gozo minister Anton Refalo held over 22 properties, while declaring a small income. But unlike the declaration system in countries like France, Maltese ministers do not need to quantify their assets, which is why properties do not get valued and therefore give an incorrect picture of the wealth held by government ministers.