Justice and tourism ministers Owen Bonnici and Edward Zammit Lewis this morning challenged Opposition leader Simon Busuttil to take action against his shadow minister Claudio Grech following the publication of e-mails which did not reflect what he said in Parliament last Wednesday.

The Labour Party distributed a recording of Mr Grech’s testimony to the Public Accounts Committee when he testified that he only met oil trader George Farrugia in 2012.

Malta Today yesterday published e-mail correspondence showing the PN MP had friendly exchanges with Mr Farrugia as far back as 2006.

Then, Mr Grech had headed former PN Minister Austin Gatt's secretariat. The minister was then responsible for Enemalta.

The PAC is scrutinising a report by the Auditor General on fuel buying at the State company but questions have also centered on the oil scandal that erupted in 2013 when Malta Today revealed how Mr Farrugia bribed top officials to ensure contracts were awarded to his international clients.

Mr Farrugia has turned in State evidence in a case involving bribery and corruption at Enemalta over oil purchases.

Dr Bonnici said that the burden was on Dr Busuttil who had launched a campaign on the need for honest politics and the people would be judging his actions

CLAUDIO GRECH REAFFIRMS STATEMENT TO PAC

In a statement, Mr Grech again reaffirmed his statement in Parliament.

"That is what I genuinely believe to be the truth to the best of my knowledge and that is the reason why I stated it with such strong conviction. The Labour Party keeps ignoring my explanation on the matter and simply is executing its sharply crafted plan to use the PAC as a tool for entrapment rather than a quest for the truth," he said.

"If I don’t recall an uneventful meeting (out of the thousands of meetings held) and cannot remember an email exchange (out of the over 180,000 sent and received), I cannot and will never say that I do. If I had to do that, then I would be lying."

He said that he wrote to the chairman and secretary of the PAC last night reiterating that he had absolutely no recollection of meetings and/or email exchanges (see letter in pdf link below).