Public Service procurement regulations should be amended for the introduction of penalties against individuals found to have breached regulations, even went the authorities that employ them do not take action, the Standards Commissioner has said.
The recommendation was made in a report into an investigation into whether then Transport Minister Ian Borg breached regulations when €500,000 worth of direct orders were awarded to a logistics company for an exhibition held just before the 2022 general election about the proposed metro.
The request for an investigation was made by independent election candidate Arnold Cassola, who, on the basis of a report on The Shift, asked how Borg had awarded €500,000 in direct orders to TEC Ltd in a single day and whether his use of equipment provided by the company for his own electoral campaign constituted a commission. If not, he argued that the costs would have breached the cap on electoral spending by candidates. He observed that in his declaration of electoral spending Borg declared that he had spent €15,000 on marquees supplied by TEC, an average of €2500 for each, when their usual price was €6,000. He also claimed that the minister misled the House about the nature and amount of direct orders given to logistics company TEC Ltd when asked about the funding for the exhibition.
The commissioner, former Chief Justice Joseph Azzopardi, declared that it was not his remit to investigate how Ian Borg had replied to the parliamentary questions since that was the responsibility of the Speaker of the House.
Furthermore, it was the Transport Authority (Transport Malta) that organised the event and not the Transport Ministry. There was no evidence that the direct orders had been awarded on directions by the minister.
Still, TM broke its own rules on procurement and direct orders when it awarded 20 direct orders to TEC Ltd for the organisation of the exhibition.
The commissioner said that it was not within the competence of his office to establish whether the direct orders were needed, instead of a competitive call for tenders.
But once TM decided to issue direct orders, it should have sought prior approval from the Finance Ministry of the Department of Contracts, in terms of public procurement regulations. According to the Auditor-General, no such prior approval had been sought. This breached the government's procurement regulations and the authority's own rules.
Procurement regulations therefore needed to be amended so that officials responsible for such breaches could be punished, even if the authorities responsible for such breaches did not take action, the commissioner said.
Minister: Discussion on a mass transport system needs to resume
Ian Borg, now Foreign Minister, in a Facebook post welcomed the commissioner's findings and said the public discussion on a mass transport system for Malta needed to continue, picking up from where it was left off years ago.