A contract and other information related to a direct order awarded by the Planning Authority to a former Joseph Muscat consultant has been 'lost', either deliberately or accidentally, The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation said on Sunday.
The issue involves Nicholas Wright, who assisted Joseph Muscat in his 2013 and 2017 electoral campaigns.
In December 2013, Sentio, a company through which Wright provided services, was sold to Luntz Global Partners and Wright became an employee of the firm, according to his own LinkedIn profile.
On 26 February 2018, Ian Borg, the minister responsible for the Planning Authority said in reply to a parliamentary question that the Planning Authority had engaged Nicholas Wright by direct order to provide consultancy services.
The direct order was awarded on November 23, 2013 and was stated as being for €39,000 per year, excluding VAT, over three years.
The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation said that in August 2019, it submitted a freedom of information request to the Planning Authority requesting its correspondence with Wright, contracts or engagement letters with him, internal correspondence and minutes of internal meetings regarding his appointment, invoices he issued to the authority, and any documents related to work he did in connection with the direct order issued to him.
The Planning Authority supplied two invoices for €9,750 issued by Wright. The foundation complained, however, that most of the documentation requested, including the contract with Wright, was missing. The authority replied with a declaration signed by its then executive chairman, Johann Buttigieg, that the “requested additional information cannot be provided as it could not be found.”
Data Protection Commissioner expresses concerns
The foundation said it then made a formal complaint to the Information and Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC ). But the commissioner said his office could neither prove nor disprove whether the missing documents were deliberately or accidentally destroyed.
The data commissioner concluded that while the PA followed the letter of the law in its handling of the FOI request, the IDPC was “not satisfied” with the way records were kept by the Planning Authority" and the facts of the case were “indeed worrying” and that it “does not augur well for accountability and transparency.”
The foundation said that given Wright’s involvement in the 2013 and 2017 electoral campaigns, the non-availability of documentation raised serious questions about the nature and purpose of his engagement by the Planning Authority, and about the reasons for the absence of documentation covering the use of public funds to engage his services.
"For a direct order of a significant value to an electoral campaign worker of Joseph Muscat’s, there is evidence that the contractor was paid but no evidence that any work was done. This raises suspicion that a public appointment was used to embezzle funds in return for services to a political campaign," it argued.
The foundation said it has now filed a formal complaint with the National Audit Office.
