The argument that Adrian Delia’s private affairs are his own rings hollower than ever now. Times of Malta published a breakdown of Adrian Delia’s monthly expenses excluding of course the cost of his existence. Adrian Delia is sleeping somewhere which is not his home so he must be paying some form of rent. Clearly he’s eating something and even assuming it’s only water that he’s drinking that must be costing something as well. And we do know that he occasionally makes trips to the cinema, which is nice but as any mother knows makes you re-finance your mortgage.
In the meantime there’s the matter of €2,750 in monthly spousal maintenance which the court ordered him to pay. There was a lot of mock shock and wax horror when this website dared to report that separation proceedings are underway. None of anyone’s beeswax, hollered the screaming hordes though that was before we were reminded that the Opposition Leader’s net salary amounts to just about what he must pay his family in monthly maintenance.
Adrian Delia took a conscious decision last year to scale down his standard of living and financial expectations in favour of public service. I have nothing but admiration for such a decision. I like to think the country needs more people who make the altruistic choice Adrian Delia made in that respect.
But Adrian Delia has the problem of still having to repay the higher expenses of his old lifestyle with the lower income of his new one. He is repaying the banks just shy of €6,000 a month in loan repayments and not all the amount appears to be set against assets but is
Adrian Delia explains his old firm is still paying him out on a monthly basis. He sold his shares in the old firm but payments to him are being made in instalments — the amount is undeclared — from which he is covering the rest of his expenses.
Presumably, he’ll be bound by some confidentiality clause with his old firm. That’s how these things usually work. Except that Adrian Delia did not switch firms, he moved into public life. That is a place where he can no longer undertake to keep confidentiality about his own finances.
Expect again a charge of blood-curdling screamers suggesting that nothing but prurient curiosity drives the interest into Adrian Delia’s financial affairs. He’s far from the only one to struggle with his finances or to undergo an expensive divorce. And the fact that he jumped into public service without any apparent regard for his own financial interests is frankly to his credit.
But the manifest vulnerability he is under is a matter of public interest and should be a matter of public concern. Adrian Delia needs to stop being selective with information about his financial situation because with every new revelation his credibility shrinks that little bit more.
This week we learnt that when he said last year he was square with the tax man was … how does one put this? Not entirely accurate?
After that, and much more before and since, it becomes harder to stop this conversation with his gesticulations and patronising assurances of ‘trust me, I know what I’m doing’ as he pilots the plane in the general direction of a cliff side.
Financial vulnerability of this scale is a high risk exposure to corruption. Ask yourself, would a bank retain a senior manager in his situation? If you don’t know the answer to that, allow me to volunteer a reply. No. Even a junior clerk in a bank would start getting pressure from his bank if an outstanding phone bill makes it to a credit information sharing service.
Transparency, of course, could reassure everyone. Right now people wonder at the mismatch between income and expenditure but they’re only certain of the latter and unclear on the former. For
But right now all we know is our universe. And here this does not make sense unless something far more sinister is going on in the background.