British PR firm helping Maltese government defend its image in EU capitals
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The EUobserver carries an extensive report on the the British public relations agency Chelgate,, which recently defended the Maltese government in a UK enquiry into fake news, and it’s ties to the Maltese government
The Euobserver reveals that it also worked for Malta on Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist who was murdered in 2017, according to three well-placed sources who spoke to EUobserver.
But Chelgate’s Malta job means Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat or his Labour Party were paying lobbyists to defend his image in EU capitals at the time of the Caruana Galizia murder investigation.
The firm declined to give details, citing a gag clause in its Maltese contract. The Maltese government also declined.
Three sources, who asked not to be named, told EUobserver that Chelgate’s Maltese job extended beyond its defence of Muscat in the British fake news probe.
Chelgate gave briefings on Caruana Galizia to targeted European media, one journalist said.
It also hired a private intelligence firm in Luxembourg called Sandstone to do a report on Caruana Galizia’s killing, two people who worked on the project said.
Excerpts of Sandstone’s research, seen by EUobserver, pointed to exotic theories that Russian president Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev had conspired to assassinate Caruana Galizia, using a Chechen killer.
EUobserver’s investigation posed the question if Muscat also used the British PR firm to promulgate exotic theories on who killed Caruana Galizia.
But the EUobserver reported that whatever Chelgate really did, the Maltese government, just like the firm, prefers people not to know.
The EUobserver reports that Chelgate’s position places the British PR firm in a subplot of the biggest political crisis in the micro-state’s modern times.
Chelgate employs about 12 people in its London HQ and two more in its Brussels office, its records indicate.
It has made as much as £1.5m (€1.8m) a year in good years.
And it specialises in “crisis management”, its website says, a premium service which falls “under the personal supervision of Chelgate’s chairman, Terence Fane-Saunders”.
Its biggest client in Brussels is US chemicals firm Lubrizol – which recently had a fire at its plant in France.
It has also worked for Harley Facades, a British firm which supplied the cladding in the Grenfell Tower blaze in London in 2017, helping cause 72 deaths.
The fact Chelgate worked for the Maltese government might never have come out if the British parliament had not mentioned it in passing in a report on fake news in February.
The House of Commons’ culture committee had accused Muscat’s party of hiring Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL), a controversial British firm linked to election meddling.
