The minutes of Electrogas board meetings related to the gas-fired power station, submitted to parliament’s Public Accounts Committee in October were "redacted" and were "missing attachments", it has emerged.
The minutes, covering the end of 2013 through to 2017, were submitted to the committee in October by Electrogas director and Tumas Group chairman Ray Fenech as part of investigations into the deal which saw the government contract Electrogas to build and run the power station.
As Fenech sat down before the committee for his second round of testimony on Wednesday, PAC chairperson Darren Carabott said he wanted to raise a number of issues with the witness after having time to review the minutes.
"I am not happy with the way the minutes were tabled. The documents should have been authentic but they did not even have signatures. There were no attachments and the minutes were also redacted," Carabott said.
During the previous sitting, the committee agreed that the documents would be viewed but not published after Fenech had argued that they contained information that was not strictly related to the power station and so should not be disclosed to the public.
On Wednesday, Fenech said he took it upon himself to redact the minutes because of concerns he might breach GDPR (general data protection rules) stipulating that personal data should not be made public without an individual's permission.
He also said that he believed there were non-disclosure agreements in place with the other shareholders that would not allow him to present certain commercially sensitive material.
"I wanted to protect myself from GDPR so I redacted names and other commercially sensitive material because of liabilities. I cannot expose myself to that.
"Normally, when there are agreements there are non-disclosure agreements and I assumed there were in this case," Fenech said.
The committee agreed to allow Fenech to explain the situation to the other directors during a board meeting being held on November 30. He is then expected to once again provide the documents to the committee by December 14.
Asked for details about the minutes, Fenech said he could not remember, despite redacting the documents.
"I am not a scanner that memorises things. I don’t know what they were about. The minutes were from the time when the contract was awarded, and they discuss the negotiations and what issues might crop up and other things. I am not capable of memorising everything," he said.
The Electrogas deal was the subject of a 500-page report by the National Audit Office (NAO) which had found a series of shortcomings in the selection process and concluded that the due diligence process was “insufficient”.
The report found the Electrogas bid did not comply with minimum requirements for the contract to build the gas-fired power station and supply LNG to Enemalta.