Former Enemalta chairman Charles Mangion says he had declared a potential conflict of interest in the Electrogas deal, having done work for one of the consortium’s shareholders.

Mangion, a notary by profession, has long had Tumas Group as a client. Research by Times of Malta shows the former Labour MP and deputy leader was even entrusted in 2006 with drawing up the will of George Fenech, who was Tumas Group’s chairman and managing director.

Fenech passed away one year after Enemalta awarded Electrogas the contract to build and operate a new gas-fired plant.

A 500-page investigation by the National Audit Office shows Mangion voted in favour of ratifying the decision to award the contract to Electrogas, after Enemalta’s selection committee gave the board an “extensive” overview of their work in selecting the consortium.

The subsequent investigation by the Auditor General found multiple instances of non-compliance with the tender requirements in the bid submitted by Electrogas, as well as in a rival bid that had also been shortlisted by the selection committee, which functioned independently from Enemalta’s board.

Charles Mangion says he was not involved in the Electrogas negotiations.

According to the NAO report, it was Mangion who presented a motion in October 2013 to ratify the committee’s selection of Electrogas as the preferred bidder, which he then voted in favour of.

One of the five Enemalta board members present voted against the motion, the NAO report said.

Mangion: ‘No reason to abstain’

Contacted by Times of Malta, Mangion said he never conducted any negotiations on the Electrogas deal and the Auditor General had never spoken to him about it. Mangion said he was sure he never discussed the deal with George Fenech or his son Yorgen.

“In my first meeting with the then CEO of Enemalta [in early 2013], I immediately raised this issue of a possible conflict of interest in the deal, and told him I do not want to be in any way involved in the negotiations,” Mangion said.

Questioned why he did not abstain from the later vote at board level, Mangion said he saw no reason to, as the selection committee had already made its choice.

The deal has long been subject to allegations of corruption, with evidence in the Panama Papers suggesting former Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi and former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri were to receive large payments from 17 Black, a once-secret offshore company owned by Yorgen Fenech, George Fenech’s son.

Brian Tonna, the Nexia BT managing partner who helped set up the Panama structures for Mizzi and Schembri, sat on the Enemalta committee that chose Electrogas as the preferred bidder. Both Tonna and Schembri have since been charged with money laundering in an unrelated case.

The committee was chaired by David Galea, a good friend of Mizzi who would go on to receive hefty direct orders from the former minister.

Fenech, accused of complicity in journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, had offered to divulge details about the “corruption” in the Electrogas deal in a failed bid for a pardon on the murder charges.

Electrogas said last year that an internal investigation by the consortium found no evidence of wrongdoing in the deal.