Updated | Whistleblowers who flagged Farrugia’s bribery to be charged

The whistleblowers whose court action against oil trader George Farrugia provided a cache of incriminating documents against the man who organised a bribery system for top Enemalta officials, are to be charged by the new Commissioner of Police Michael Cassar

However police sources have told MaltaToday that the charges were issued by Cassar's predecessor.

Michael Cassar, who takes over from Acting Police Commissioner Ray Zammit, told the Times of Malta that the charges pending against the Farrugia brothers, Salvu, Antonio, Gaetano and Raymond, had been issued and the case appointed for February.

They will be charged after they allegedly admitted knowledge of the fact their brother was paying bribes to officials to secure oil contracts from Enemalta for Powerplan Ltd, the family business he once managed.

The brothers were arrested in March 2013, shortly before the general election, but never arraigned.

The brothers, who own the John’s Group, had started legal proceedings against Farrugia for siphoning some €6 million in profits from Powerplan into his own personal company Aikon and an offshore bank account. Many of the company invoices Aikon issued for the supply of oil to Enemalta had been deposited in court.

MORE How Farrugia used Swiss account to divert Aikon 'commissions' • EXPLAINER | Aikon Ltd, George Farrugia and Intershore

Invoices forwarded to Gonzi

In 2011, a Security Service member detailed with Lawrence Gonzi, passed on documents with allegations of the irregularities on behalf of one of the Farrugia family members.

Gonzi has denied having been shown these documents, among them Aikon Ltd invoices. When first asked about this episode back in 2013, Gonzi reportedly told the MSS officer to report the allegation to the Commissioner of Police, without taking any further ownership of the matter.

“I have always insisted publicly, that whenever I had any information, I would always refer it directly to the Commissioner of Police, because it is the duty of all constitutional authorities to take responsibility for such investigations…”

The security officer relayed the information to his superior, Malta Security Services head Godfrey Scicluna, who on his part communicated on the matter with a high-level official inside investments minister’s Austin Gatt’s secretariat.

An investigation into the irregularities never took place by the MSS or the Police: instead, the cache of papers was decimated – ostensibly shredded – and instead passed on to the finance ministry, which in turn passed on the matter to the Tax Compliance Unit to investigate.

Evarist Bartolo: documents shredded

Only this week in parliament, education minister Evarist Bartolo told the House that Gonzi’s bodyguard took the invoices and emails that Farrugia had sent to the MSS head in May 2011.

LISTEN: Parliamentary session at 2:09:00

“This file contained a cache of documents sent to the TCU and a series of emails; contact was made with a minister’s official and the emails were shredded. This was how the Security Service was used to destroy information.

“The initials of the two persons involved in this matter are R.S. and B.P.,” Bartolo said.

Little was made at the time of the suggestion that bribes could have been paid on he supply of oil to Enemalta.

Tax investigation

The Finance Ministry launched an investigation in 2011 after receiving a tip-off that rogue oil trader George Farrugia was committing serious tax fraud.

The file with documented evidence was passed on to the Finance Ministry indicating rampant tax fraud at Aikon. The dossier included Aikon invoices to Total’s Geneva-based subsidiary Totsa. The file was forwarded for investigation to the Tax Compliance Unit on August 25, 2011.

When the oil scandal was broken by MaltaToday in February 2013, then finance minister Tonio Fenech had said that the TCU failed to connect Aikon Ltd to oil trader George Farrugia.

Fenech denied having known of the case or that it involved oil trader George Farrugia, who has now turned State’s evidence on the payment of kickbacks from oil giant Trafigura to Enemalta officials on fuel oil procurement.

The minister however had confirmed that it had been the MSS that passed on the documents to his head of secretariat Alan Caruana, who passed them on to the TCU without seeing what the documents were, and without informing the minister.

Fenech said it was the first time since being appointed minister that a tax probe was being requested by the head of the secret service. Both the MSS and the TCU are not answerable to the finance ministry.

Fenech knew that the TCU’s investigation, dealing with invoices covering the period 2004-2010, had only focused on the shareholders of Aikon Ltd at the time, a nominee company called Intershore Fiduciary Services.

But when Farrugia was sued by the John’s Group, the nominee company resigned its services to Farrugia’s Aikon Ltd in January 2011.

At the time the John’s Group were clients of former home affairs minister Manuel Mallia, whose dismissal last week on the back of an inquiry also saw the removal of Ray Zammit from acting police commissioner.

PAC revelations

Former police inspector Angelo Gafà, who in June 2013 was assigned to the Security Service, recently told the parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, which is discussing the case, that he intended prosecuting the brothers before he was reassigned to the Security Service in June 2013. He said he was waiting for some bank documents before pushing ahead but confirmed the decision had been taken.