Court rules in our favour: Film Commission must release spending documents

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Malta Film Commission must hand over invoices it received for David Walliams’ hosting the Malta Film Awards in January 2022, the Court of Appeal ruled this week. Malta Film Week 2022 cost some €1.3 million, more than three times the Film Commission’s allocated budget of €400,000.

Film Commissioner Johann Grech declared in an interview that the Film Commission would “issue all the numbers after the Film Awards” about Mr Walliam’s contract. No numbers were issued, so we filed a FOI request for the information. Grech has resisted our request for two years, citing a confidentiality clause in Walliam’s contract and challenging two judgements in our favour.

The Court of Appeal upheld the earlier ruling by the Information and Data Protection Commissioner that the confidentiality clause in the agreement with Mr Walliams could not be used to prevent disclosure of the amount he was paid.

We now expect the Film Commission to act in the public interest and release the invoices which were paid out of public funds.