The Public Accounts Committee will on Wednesday start debating the voluminous report by the National Audit Office into the Electrogas deal. 

The 600-page report had flagged multiple instances of non-compliance in the requirements for Electrogas to win the bid to build a new gas-fired power station in 2013.

The first PAC hearing into the report will see a presentation by the Auditor General regarding the report and its conclusions. The PAC is chaired by Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami. 

An assessment of the last two shortlisted bids was overseen by Nexia BT managing partner Brian Tonna, who is the subject of a police investigation into an alleged kickback on passport sales to former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri in 2015.

According to a “conservative estimate” by the NAO, energy generated by the Electrogas plant was on average €50.64 per unit more expensive than the Malta-Sicily interconnector.

Enemalta and the government have disputed the NAO’s estimates.

The NAO had said in a statement in December 2018 that it looked forward to clarifying “misconceptions” about the Electrogas report in parliament.

Addressing a press conference on Monday, two days before the PAC starts the debate, PN leader Bernard Grech said the PN wants the report to be discussed so that the Maltese public can possibly be freed from the 18-year contract which is costing Maltese taxpayers €91 million extra a year.

Grech said that the Electrogas power station project is riddled with irregularities as the Auditor General concluded after being granted access to the contracts, which to this day are still hidden from the Opposition and which is holding it back from carrying out its duties according to the constitution. 

He recalled how the Nationalist Opposition presented a motion for the Prime Minister to appoint an independent public inquiry into this contract which is costing the taxpayers €91 million a year more in electricity bills.

“At that time Robert Abela had the chance to disassociate himself from the filth of his predecessor, but this request was rejected and with his behaviour he became an accomplice in hiding the filth committed by Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri,” he stressed. 

He also recalled how the opposition had in the last legislature insisted for the publication of the contracts but the government had published only a redacted version. 

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