Questions surrounding negotiations in the controversial €4.5 million VistaJet contract remained unanswered as yet another member of the Malta Tourism Authority top brass was unable to say who was directly involved.
Testifying before the Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday, MTA chairman Gavin Gulia insisted he was not part of the team who were involved in the talks despite being one of the signatories.
“Prior to the signing, I had spoken on the terms of the contract with Paul Bugeja who at the time was the MTA CEO,” he said.
However, in a previous sitting, the former CEO had insisted he too had not been involved in the negotiations.
Covering a three-year period between 2016 and 2018, the deal was meant to promote Malta within the business aviation sector, but the Opposition has been crying foul saying there was very little to justify such expenditure.
The agreement, revealed by Times of Malta in 2017, is under the spotlight of the PAC as part of its debate on the 2018 MTA accounts.
In his testimony, Gulia repeatedly pointed out that as non-executive chairman he was not involved in the daily running operations of the authority.
However, he remarked that both Bugeja and former Tourism Ministry aviation consultant Josephine Farrugia had been somehow involved in the deal, though he could not say if they were actually taking part in talks with VistaJet.
He remarked that the MTA deputy CEO had sent a template of the proposed contract to Farrugia.
When it was pointed out to him some of his assertions were not in line with the testimony given by Bugeja and Farrugia who had denied any direct involvement, Gulia insisted he had no reason to doubt their integrity.
At one point, PAC chairman PN MP Beppe Fenech Adami remarked how all those who had been summoned to testify on this deal seemed to be passing the buck and pointing fingers through their evasive replies.
Asked why some payment authorisation forms had been signed by Farrugia who held no official post in the MTA, Gulia said he would have acted differently, possibly by authorising the documents himself.
Media plan
PN MP Chris Said noted that, according to the contract, a media plan should have been drafted for the second and third year. Asked if he had seen such plan, given that in 2018 he had been acting CEO as well, Gulia pointed out he could not give a definite reply.
“Such plan was the responsibility of Leslie Vella not mine, but the latter, who has 37 years’ experience in the sector, decided against drawing up such plan,” he said.
The MTA chairman said this contract was never debated in the authority’s board as it fell under the remit of the management board which. Nonetheless, his impression was it was not debated in the latter, he said.
Gulia insisted the deal was “remarkable” in terms of outcome, saying it resulted in a €20 million injection in the Maltese economy.