Former Enemalta chairperson Charles Mangion said Thursday that when the board "ratified" the decision to award the power station contract to the Electrogas consortium, he was not aware of financial issues involving Gasol, one of the partners in the group. 

Testifying before parliament's Public Accounts Committee, Mangion once again said his role was only to ratify the decision to award the contract to Electrogas and this was based on the "expert advice" given to the board. 

Asked about Gasol's financial issues and the fact that Azerbaijan company SOCAR had been willing to step in to mitigate the risks, Mangion said that at the time, he was not aware of the problems. 

"We did not get into the companies’ financial situations. We had experts who were asked to look into this, and we trusted what they said. We did not question the experts, obviously. I learnt about SOCAR stepping in through the NAO report, I believe. 

"Enemalta had no reasons to doubt. I did not know about the financial problems of Gasoil nor the SOCAR guarantee," Mangion told the Committee. 

A report by the Auditor General had 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. 

In 2015, Gasol dropped out of the consortium just two years after it was selected as the preferred bidder. Along with Gasol, GEM Holdings Ltd, the umbrella company for the local shareholders, Azerbaijan's SOCAR Trading and Siemens Projects Ventures made up the consortium. 

In its report, the NAO had noted that the fact that SOCAR was willing to mitigate the risk had raised further doubt as to the use of having Gasol serve as lead member of the consortium. 

In a previous sitting, Mangion had said he voted in favour of the “ratification”, despite having declared a conflict of interest due to being a long-time notary to Electrogas shareholders Tumas Group.