Hardly a week goes by without some new revelation emerging that points to the mismanagement of public funds, government corruption or some other form of abuse of power.
The latest case of abuse of taxpayers’ money is revealed in the National Audit Office report on the contracts awarded to a private consortium to provide services to the public-owned St Vincent de Paul Residence for the elderly.
The NAO report reveals a compendium of corrupt practices, waste of public funds and political dereliction of duty.
The €274 million deal saw the consortium of James Caterers Ltd and a subsidiary of the DB Group being given contracts that the NAO report describes as being riddled with “serious shortcomings, missing documentation and oversight failures”.
The audit office says that procurement regulations were breached and the deal “could potentially be deemed invalid”. The absence of a government endorsement for such a significant contract was “conspicuous”. The SVDP procurement team adopted the usual tricks to break the strict procurement regulations. It justified the breach of regulations on the pretext that “competition was absent and for reasons of extreme urgency”.
Too many questions keep emerging with every new NAO report, court testimony or piece of investigative journalism.
It is indeed unfortunate that the NAO’s new findings, meticulously documented, come years after the SVDP contracts were awarded.
The wheels of the audit process, exhaustive as it is, turn too slowly to properly safeguard taxpayers’ interest. The office needs to be given more resources to produce more timely reports. The more time passes, the less chance there is of political, administrative or criminal redress.
The first issue that needs to be addressed now is that of political responsibility for this debacle.
Abela needs to prove he can be trusted to hold his cabinet ministers accountable for political actions and omissions.
The mismanagement of the contract occurred on the watch of Michael Farrugia and Justyne Caruana, minister and parliamentary secretary respectively up to May 2017, and Michael Falzon and Anthony Agius Decelis, who held the same respective posts after that.
The NAO report makes some damning remarks about the political responsibility of the parliamentary secretaries when it says that SVDP committed to spending hundreds of millions of euros without seeking higher clearance.
The auditors were understandably incredulous that the parliamentary secretaries failed to inquire about the regularity of the procurement, “in clear breach of their duty”.
It is not enough for the current minister, Falzon, who basically washed his hands of the affair, to pledge “internal scrutiny” and that “we will see what can be fixed”. Political accountability requires the resignation or removal of any sitting cabinet member that the NAO has identified as carrying some responsibility for this enormous abuse of public funds.
Further, the “breach of legislative provisions”, rendering the procurement as potentially invalid, is a matter for the police to investigate.
Muscat’s stewardship of the previous administration enabled state capture by elite business groups.
The risk now is that the evidence of sleaze has become so plentiful that it will de-sensitise public opinion about its gravity.
The government is intensely engaged in mending Malta’s broken image, fearing negative repercussions on international investment if it is not seen to turn a new page on public governance.
It is important for Abela to lose no time in rectifying past wrongdoings, even if it implicates people sitting in his Cabinet.