Business giants Gasan have not found a buyer for their shares in the Electrogas power station venture, one year after they expressed their intention to exit the project.

The Gasan family, who own 11.7 per cent of the project, last September said they had decided to identify all avenues to exit Electrogas and not profit from the investment.

This has proven to be easier said than done as it is unlikely any other private enterprise would buy into a project mired in corruption claims and linked to journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.

Former Electrogas director Yorgen Fenech, who represented Tumas Group on the power station board, was charged with complicity in the journalist’s murder in November 2019. He denies the charges.

Caruana Galizia received a large cache of leaked Electrogas documents in the months prior to the car bomb that killed her outside her Bidnija home in October 2017.

Mortified and shocked the project was linked to the assassination

The Gasan family said last year it was “mortified and shocked” that the power station project was being linked to Caruana Galizia’s assassination.

A spokesman for Gasan confirmed with Times of Malta there had been no developments in their bid to exit the project.

The spokesman said the Gasan Group still intends to exit this investment “as soon as possible”, at no profit, as declared last year.

Times of Malta has revealed how both Fenech and fellow local Electrogas investor Paul Apap Bologna opened up secret offshore structures that are the subject of a police investigation.

Apap Bologna resigned as an Electrogas director in May after Times of Malta outed his ownership of offshore company Kittiwake, which was set up in parallel with Fenech’s 17 Black.

The medicine importer has refused to answer questions about Kittiwake during parliamentary committee meetings scrutinising the Electrogas deal. Opposition calls for a public inquiry into the power station project have been shut down by the government.

The project was one of the key planks in former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s 2013 election campaign.

An investigation by the National Audit Office found “multiple instances” of non-compliance in the bid for the power station project submitted by the Electrogas consortium, which includes Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company Socar and Siemens.

Electrogas has said an internal review of the company has found no signs of corruption at any stage of the project.

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