Azzopardi Tanti hires Chris Cardona: Malta’s newest ‘economy expert’ or recycled minister?

Azzopardi Tanti insists he hired Cardona purely for his economy expertise

Businessman and Labour Party donor Joseph Tanti “Azzopardi” has broken his silence over the appointment of disgraced former minister Chris Cardona to the board of his construction empire, insisting the decision was based solely on Cardona’s “unmatched grasp of macro-economic levers” and not on any political IOUs.

Speaking from the wood-panelled boardroom of the Tanti Group in Birkirkara – a room that doubles as a shrine to vintage Maltese buses and framed photos of past prime ministers – Azzopardi told Hot Malta: “I didn’t hire Chris for his surname; I hired him for his synapses. The man can read a balance sheet the way Għanna folk read a tragic love story – fast, emotional, and always ending in someone losing a fortune.”

The revelation, delivered over steaming cups of Kafe’ tal-ħġejjeġ poured by Azzopardi’s own mother, has detonated a fresh national conversation about the revolving door between Castille and corporate Malta. Cardona, who resigned as economy minister in 2020 after a tumultuous tenure that included a 3 a.m. Arrest at a Munich strip club and an unresolved murder-for-hire allegation, was last month named “Strategic Economic Advisor” to the Tanti Group, a conglomerate whose recent tenders include the controversial €400 million Manoel Island redevelopment and a mysteriously fast-tracked fuel station in Żonqor.

The village that raised them both
To understand why the story matters, leave the traffic of Birkirkara and drive 15 minutes up the hill to Siġġiewi, the village that reared both men. Here, old men still argue over ħobż biż-żejt in the shade of the parish church, and every family claims at least one mason, one notary and one “minister we fixed it for”. Cardona’s face stares from a fading Labour billboard that nobody bothered to tear down after the last election; Azzopardi’s initials are welded into the wrought-iron gates of the new public garden he donated.

“Joseph grew up delivering milk at 4 a.m.; Chris could recite Mintoff speeches before he could shave,” says 78-year-old grocer Ċikku Farrugia, who sold them both their first pastizzi. “Now one’s paying the other €120,000 a year plus perks. That’s not expertise – that’s tal-pepe politics wearing a new suit.”

Cultural significance: the qalb tal-maduma moment
Malta’s collective reaction has been what sociologist Dr Graziella Vella terms a “qalb tal-maduma” moment – literally “the heart goes black”, that uniquely Maltese cocktail of resignation and dark humour. Memes of Cardona holding a pneumatic drill labelled “Economy Levers” have overtaken TikTok, while Opposition MP Karol Aquilina tabled a parliamentary question asking whether “expertise in lap-dance economics” now qualifies as a transferable skill.

Yet beneath the satire lies a deeper cultural nerve. The islands have always forgiven the colourful rogue provided he brings home the tuna, but the Tanti-Cardona link touches a raw post-Aztec Holdings scar: the fear that national policy is still written on the back of a napkin at Da Marco and paid for by the same five families.

Community impact: the Żonqor precedent
In Marsascala, where Tanti plans a yacht marina that locals swear will turn St Thomas Bay into a private bathtub, residents have revived the 2016 Żonqor protest playbook. Pensioner Doris Pace, 71, has re-activated her Facebook group “Save Żonqor, Save Us All” and is organising a moonlit kayak flotilla for next Friday. “First they promised us jobs, then they gave us dust. Now they’re recycling ministers like plastic bottles,” she says, brandishing a home-made sign that reads ‘Economy Expert Wanted – Must Love Bays More Than Backhanders’.

Even within the Labour grassroots, unease is palpable. One junior minister, speaking off the record, admitted: “Chris knows where the bodies are buried, but the smell is starting to reach the tourists.”

Conclusion: a nation’s homework
Azzopardi Tanti’s defence – that Malta is too small to blacklist talent simply because it once staggered out of a Bavarian nightclub – might wash in a boardroom, but on the ferries and in the village bars it feels like another chapter in the same old serial. Until Parliament passes the long-promised cooling-off law that stops ministers from monetising contacts the minute they collect their gold watch, every new appointment will be read as a wink across the baħar. And in a country where everyone is related by baptism or business, the wink travels faster than the speed of light – or, at the very least, faster than a Tanti concrete mixer at 5 a.m. On a Siġġiewi bypass.