Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/797847
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 12 MARCH 2017 12 News TIM DIACONO THE Gozo Youth Council is em- broiled in a controversy that its members are being propped up by ghost NGOs, and right in the thick of it is the PN's new election can- didate, Ryan Mercieca. The GYC was set up in 2014, with a statute requiring its 11 ex- ecutive members to be nominated by a Gozitan youth NGO that is registered with the Gozo NGO Association – an umbrella group for Gozitan NGOs of which Mer- cieca is secretary-general. Unlike their counterparts in the Maltese Youth Council, the GYC's affiliated NGOs are not required to register with the Commissioner of NGOs, which verifies opera- tions and financial set-ups of reg- istered NGOs. Mercieca was elected as the GYC's first president, nominated by the Gozo University Group, but he resigned a few months later when he was taken on by the Na- tionalist Party as an election can- didate. However, he maintained his position as project manager of 'iLead' – a youth leadership train- ing scheme for which the GYC had been granted some €50,000 in EEA funds. In 2016, despite no longer be- ing officially involved in the GYC, Mercieca was listed as its contact person for a second approved youth leadership training scheme – this time worth €76,505 of EU funds. An email seen by MaltaToday shows that Mercieca had origi- nally intended to contest this year's GYC elections, this time under the name of an NGO called 'Innovative Youths Gozo'. It was supposed to have been a seamless annual general meeting – 11 can- didates for 11 positions – and this newspaper is informed that Mer- cieca had intended to regain his old position as council president. Apart from Mercieca, the origi- nal list included four other mem- bers of the Gozo NGO Associa- tion's executive. Yet a Pandora's box was about to be opened once the Gozo Univer- sity Group (GUG) found out that its nominee, Manuel Xuereb, had missed the final cut because the organisation had not paid a €30 membership fee to the Gozo NGO Association – as required by the GYC statute. Scanning the list of approved nominees, the GUG was as- tonished to find that a certain Francesca Marie Attard had been nominated by Students' Voice – a subcommittee within GUG itself – that had changed name the previ- ous year, and for whom the GUG did not pay the €30 membership fee. In an email seen by MaltaToday, Daniel Cassar – headmaster of the Gozo 6th Form, where Students' Voice was founded – confirmed that the subcommittee had been disbanded and that he had person- ally asked that its bank account be closed. He added that he had cre- ated Students' Voice to serve as a voice for Gozitan 6th form stu- dents but that it had been subse- quently "hijacked" by GUG and its president, at the time Ryan Mer- cieca. Xuereb approached the Gozo NGO Association, which con- firmed that none of the 11 ap- proved NGOs had paid the fee either. He then challenged the GYC with this information, and it postponed the AGM by two weeks to give all organisations a chance to pay the fee. However, the presence of Stu- dents' Voice in the list also gave weight to long-held suspicions that several of the NGOs that nominated youths to the council, do not actually exist. In recent e-mail correspond- ence seen by MaltaToday, Victo- ria mayor Samuel Azzopardi de- nied the existence of the 'Victoria Youth Group' – which had nomi- nated a member to the GYC. Similarly, the Xaghra local coun- cil denied the existence of the 'Xaghra Youth Group' and the president of the youth organisa- tion Rotaract Malta confirmed that its Gozitan branch had been defunct for over a year. Moreover, sources close to the GYC told MaltaToday that the so-called 'Gozo Musicians' Asso- ciation' and 'Gozo Youth Radio Broadcasters' are non-existent, and indeed a simple Google search reveals no information whatsoev- er on them. There is also barely any online trace of Mercieca's own 'Inno- vative Youths Gozo' – merely a profile on a website for EU youth entrepreneurs, with its contact de- tails listed as Mercieca's personal email and mobile number. MaltaToday can confirm that none of these 'organisations' is registered with the NGO Com- missioner. Mercieca's council nomination silently withdrawn Around this time, Mercieca found himself the target of politi- cal controversy when he allegedly threatened the Gozo NGO Asso- ciation's treasurer, Joe Camilleri, during a libel case. Mercieca – also the association's secretary – had sued It-Torca for libel over a report that he had failed to produce documents relat- ed to EU funds received by the as- sociation. On 23 January, Camill- eri testified as a witness and said that Mercieca was in charge of funding for the association's pro- jects and that Mercieca's policy was to hand over to the authorities all invoices and receipts related to a project once it was completed. A couple of minutes after the case was adjourned, Camilleri and Mercieca clashed in the court- room corridors and were hauled back inside. Camilleri told the magistrate that Mercieca had asked him whether he had been given permission to exhibit asso- ciation documents in court. Camilleri allegedly replied that he had spoken to the NGO asso- ciation's president, Saviour Grech, and Mercieca warned him: "You'll get what's coming to you" (issa ge- jja tieghek). Back in Gozo, the GYC's re- scheduled AGM was coming up and on 16 February it released an updated list of 12 nominees, this time including Manuel Xuereb's name. There were some other notable changes to the final list, and in- deed it did not include the under- pressure Mercieca, who had by then rescinded his nomination. Instead, 'Innovative Youths Gozo' – which by then was listed as 'In- novative Gozo Youths' – nomi- nated Mercieca's girlfriend, Marie Cefai. The original nominee for Stu- dents' Voice, Francesca Marie At- tard, was now listed as the nomi- nee for 'Xaghra Youth Group', and the defunct subcommittee instead nominated Charlene Debrincat, who is also a member of the Gozo NGO Association. Debrincat did not attend the AGM because she was abroad, and therefore all questions asked about Students' Voice during the AGM were dismissed on the ground that its nominee was not present to answer them. As can be read in the minutes, Xuereb responded by filing a mo- tion calling for all 12 nominees to declare on the spot the names of their organisations' presidents, secretaries and treasurers. The motion failed, with four votes in favour and 11 against. Eman Borg, a member of the Gozo NGO Association executive who had been touted as the next GYC president but who resigned from the council hours after Mal- taToday sent a set of questions to Mercieca, argued that the re- lease of such information "would breach the Data Protection Act". MaltaToday is also informed by separate sources that a separate motion was passed that had called for the statute to be changed so as to render Gozitan NGOs' registra- tion with the NGO Commissioner a prerequisite. However, this amendment was inexplicably left out of the min- utes and the GYC's updated stat- ute. NGO Commissioner Kenneth Wain confirmed with MaltaTo- day that he is now investigating whether the 11 Gozitan NGOs represented on the council do in fact have statutes and lists of pres- ident, secretary and treasurer as required by the GYC statute. Confusion over leadership scheme project As stated earlier, Mercieca had previously worked as a project manager for iLead, a scheme aimed at teaching leadership skills to Gozitan youths for which the GYC was awarded some €50,000 in EEA funds. In its two-paragraph annual re- port for 2016, the GYC said that the project was spread over 10 sessions in 10 months, culminat- ing in a final conference in March 2016. Before the project started, Mercieca said that he would re- ceive €25,397 in personal wages, while €7,430 would be spent on travel and subsistence allow- ance, €5,056 in equipment costs, €1,068 on "consumables, supplies and general services", €9,440 on subcontracting costs, €1,274 on promotional costs, and €4,956 on lecturer fees. However, the GYC did not grant a final breakdown of the project's expenditure in this year's AGM. When asked about it, the GYC's outgoing finance officer and PN's Munxar local councillor Damien Spiteri said that he did not have the information in hand and that it is now the responsibility of the GYC's new executive to release them. The financial statement for 2016 that the GYC did release in its AGM is laughably short of detail – claiming €0 in income and €154 VA C A N C Y JOB DESCRIPTION GPAY CO. LTD. – MALTA Position: Product Manager GPAY Co. Ltd. (the "Company"), is a company in the process of being licensed by the Malta Financial Services Authority as an Electronic Money Institution. The Company is currently looking for an individual to be employed as a Product Manager, on a fulltime basis. 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