As parliament has adjourned for the summer break, there will be a hiatus in the appearances of Joseph Muscat at sessions of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC): a good idea to try to sum up what has come out of the past three sessions.
So far as the “grilling” of Muscat is concerned, I reckon that the yield of information of public interest has been near nil.
There has been some public cheering about Muscat’s apparent “loss of composure” but that fact, even if real and not just a sham, yielded nothing in the way of information of value to the public and certainly led to no tightening of the screw on Muscat.
The reason for that, I would argue, has been the persistence of the PAC chair, Darren Carabott in trying to nail Muscat down through the misdeeds or the words of his cronies.
To defeat that approach, Muscat relies on a high defensive wall of personal denial of “meddling” in the work of selection boards and committees. His closest cronies – Brian Tonna, Konrad Mizzi, and Keith Schembri – have reinforced this wall by refusing to answer PAC questions.
On the other hand, in his first two PAC sessions, Muscat made several statements on which he could have been and still can be hammered:
1. Electrogas, “which had been around from day one”, had handed to Enemalta the sum of €36 million to enable Enemalta to lower its charges.
Has anybody in or out of Muscat’s circle ever mentioned that ‘donation’ before? Muscat had included lower utility charges in his 2013 electoral manifesto. The actual date on which Enemalta did lower its charges was March 31, 2014. No one had so much as mentioned Electrogas publicly before March 2013 or even by end-March 2014. What is certain is that the Electrogas contract had not been awarded by the latter date.
So, what was the calendar date of this ‘day one’ and of this great act of Electrogas generosity? Was this ‘donation’ – it has all the qualities of a bribe – and its date recorded in Enemalta’s published accounts?
2. Muscat said that Enemalta was currently paying Electrogas €2 million annually “in excise”.
What was that supposed to mean? Muscat seemed to me to be saying that this “excise” was in repayment of that €36 million Electrogas had originally gifted to Enemalta “on day one”. Strange form of ‘gift’ that would have been, in that case.
But the last time we had heard of “excise” was in the context of that generous deed that Mizzi must have persuaded Muscat to go in for: a waiver of €40 million that Electrogas owed to customs as excise duty on the importation of LNG.
Remember, the SOCAR person on the Electrogas board was purchasing the LNG from the Gulf at current market prices and selling it to Electrogas at a fixed price. Until around mid-2020, the SOCAR person was making a killing from the market-Electrogas price differential.
Where was this veritable torrent of money going?- Edward Mallia
Where was this veritable torrent of money going? Meanwhile, Electrogas had to foot the bill for transporting the LNG to Marsaxlokk and pay customs duty as an importer. Was Muscat aware of this arrangement?
3. Electrogas had to pay for the transport of LNG from source to the Marsaxlokk tanker as well as customs duty as importer.
But did that customs duty payment continue after the 2017 waiver? Or was Enemalta – that’s us – made to pay it instead? Is the current €2 million annual “excise” mentioned so flippantly by Muscat, in fact, customs duty that Electrogas should be paying? Again, does this so-called excise payment show in Enemalta’s accounts?
4. The Mosura wind farm. Muscat must have known of the existence of this Enemalta acquisition as he was present with his chief satraps at the handover ceremony in Montenegro.
Was he aware of the mechanics of the process of acquisition, of the people involved and of the profits made by various of his friends, derived directly from the extortionate price Enemalta paid?
In August 2021, Muscat was reported as saying he still did not understand the issue of Montenegro wind farm. The accurate narrative pertaining to this question is now firmly in the public domain. Muscat cannot overturn it; he can feign ignorance, which will only ‘protect’ him from being called a knave but expose him to (correct) calls of being a fool: a prime minister with a pack of crooks he was happy to give free rein to in high ministerial and administrative posts (!)
And, even so, he would still be fair target for our local saying ‘ma min rajtek xebbaħtek’ (birds of a feather flock together), quite apart from the charge of aiding and abetting corrupt conduct.
Edward MalliaRemember, he had no “consulting contracts” at the time of the Mozura affair to distract him from his duties as prime minister.
Edward Mallia is an environmentalist and former academic.