Opposition MPs want former prime minister Joseph Muscat and his chief of staff Keith Schembri to face a parliamentary grilling on the Electrogas project. 

They are on a lengthy list of 84 witnesses the opposition wants to question in the public accounts committee (PAC) hearing on the Electrogas contract investigation. 

The committee’s hearing is based on a 2018 report on the contract by the National Audit Office. 

Other witnesses on the list include police commissioner Angelo Gafà and Prime Minister Robert Abela. 

Last Thursday, the committee spent two hours arguing over whether the opposition can summon witnesses without providing a justification for hearing their testimony.

Labour MPs have been keen to get the opposition to commit to time frames for the Electrogas investigation to be completed. 

PN MPs have pushed back at the request, insisting the committee’s work cannot be put on a deadline. 

Speaker Anġlu Farrugia is set to rule on whether demands by Labour for the opposition to justify the reason behind summoning each of the 84 witnesses is necessary. 

'Corrupt scheme'

The gas-fired power station project was a key policy plank in Labour’s ascent to power in 2013. 

Suspicions have since been cast on whether the deal was sewn up prior to the election.

Last December, Schembri and former energy minister Konrad Mizzi were slapped with US travel bans over “credible information of a corrupt scheme” in the Electrogas contract. 

Muscat continues to defend the deal to this day, claiming it helped shelter Malta from the global spike in energy prices. 

The government has thrown tens of millions of euros at subsidising energy prices to protect consumers from the explosion in prices. 

Parliament’s probe into the Electrogas deal has made slow progress ever since it started investigating the project in December 2020. 

Regular wrangling among its members and weeks of filibustering by former energy minister Mizzi has contributed to the snail’s pace of the hearings.

The power station was officially opened in April 2017. Photo: DOI

What had the National Audit Office found?

A 500-page NAO report had found the Electrogas bid did not comply with minimum requirements to win the power station contract on “multiple instances”. 

While the NAO said material shortcomings were found in the Electrogas bid and that of the other shortlisted finalist, the Endeavor Consortium, both bids were deemed to be materially complete. 

The report found that the selection committee only referred matters for legal consideration with respect to the Electrogas submission.

This difference in treatment was of concern to the NAO for it indicated that the level of assurance sought with respect to the bid by Electrogas was not applied in the case of the bid by the Endeavor Consortium. 

Despite the “considerable number of instances of non-compliance with the minimum requirements” noted by the stage-two evaluation committee, the submissions by the ElectroGas Consortium and the Endeavor Consortium were recommended to proceed to the ensuing stages of evaluation, the auditor general said.

In the report, the NAO acknowledged that the stage-two evaluation committee was “limited in terms of options available” to it, and in the circumstances, allowing for the rectification of deviations from the minimum requirements at a later stage in the process represented a reasonable course of action.