‘Another dirty lie’: PM denies sending children to private school abroad

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has flatly denied that his two daughters are receiving their education at a private school in the UK abroad, as is being alleged on the social media.

The story on the Prime Minister’s children being sent to a school abroad is another dirty lie on the Muscat family, a spokesman for the PM told The Malta Independent when asked to verify or deny what had been uploaded on social media groups, and repeated on Facebook by Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi.

Azzopardi questioned how the Prime Minister could afford “€70,000 annual tuition fees for his kids” on a salary of €65,000 a year, going on to also mention the PM’s “€12,000 one-week jaunt in Dubai”. Azzopardi went further by saying this is proof of “a corrupt Prime Minister receiving kickbacks”. Azzopardi uploaded this comment after posts on the social media said that the PM’s children were attending Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.

But, when asked by The Malta Independent about this claim, the OPM dismissed it as being an outright lie.

“The PM’s children have not changed and are not changing their school. It is mindboggling how PN politicians repeat these lies without verifying them, especially when they go to the extent of saying that the PM’s children will be schooled in the United Kingdom,” the spokesman said.

“These PN politicians are the same people who were part of a smear campaign against the Prime Minister’s family, and which was since proven to be false. It is a real shame they have not learnt anything from the PM’s resolve in not dragging any politician’s family in the political arena, especially when these are complete fabrications.”

The spokesman was referring to the Egrant saga, with PN politicians including Azzopardi, insisting that a company opened in Panama belonged to the Prime Minister and his wife Michelle, with a magisterial inquiry later finding no connection whatsoever.