Keith Schembri will face a grilling from members of parliament today on his role in the Electrogas power station contract.

Schembri, who has been banned from travelling to the US due to “corruption” in the contract, has kept a low profile since resigning as Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff in November 2019.

He has been summoned as a witness in an ongoing probe into the contract by parliament’s public accounts committee.

The parliamentary investigation was triggered by a comprehensive report by the Auditor General, detailing shortcomings in the tendering process.

Electrogas was chosen as the winning bidder in 2013, on the back of a Labour pledge to build a new power station within 18 months of taking power.

The contract was awarded to Electrogas, a consortium that included Schembri’s good friend Yorgen Fenech.

A leaked e-mail by Schembri’s financial advisers, Nexia BT, suggested that significant sums were going to be transferred to the OPM chief of staff via a secret offshore company owned by Fenech.

Former energy minister Konrad Mizzi, who has already been questioned by the parliamentary committee, was also set to receive funds from Fenech’s company 17 Black.

All three men deny any wrongdoing.

Schembri resigned from government during the November 2019 political crisis, which also saw the downfall of Muscat and Mizzi.

The OPM chief of staff resigned after being implicated in journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder by Fenech, the suspected mastermind.

Fenech denies charges of being complicit in the assassination. 

Caruana Galizia was investigating an Electrogas data dump and Fenech’s secret company 17 Black in the months leading up to her murder in October 2017.

Both Schembri and Mizzi were questioned by police for trading in influence in 2020, on the basis of WhatsApp chats they had with Fenech.

They have yet to face any charges as a result.

An inquiry into the 17 Black and Panama Papers scandal, involving Schembri and Mizzi, has not yet resulted in any prosecutions.