FTS supplier attempts to silence MaltaToday with criminal and civil defamation suits

Sandro Ciliberti sues MaltaToday for criminal libel, denies being investigated by police over Foundation for Tomorrow Schools' scandal 

Sandro Ciliberti
Sandro Ciliberti

A businessman who supplied the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools with school apparatus and furniture after winning public tenders, has launched a massive ‘freezing’ action against MaltaToday with civil suits for libel against two editors and two journalists, as well as criminal defamation suits.

MaltaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan immediately hit out at the action taken by Sandro Ciliberti, saying the newspaper would not be silenced in reporting on the scandal surrounding dubious direct orders issued by the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools, and the way tenders were issued by the FTS to benefit particular businessmen.

Ciliberti, also known as the victim of a bomb attack on is Gozo residence at the beginning of the year, has falsely claimed that MaltaToday’s source is Janice Camilliri, who in the past placed tendered offers for FTS contracts on behalf of Immagine Casa.

“Mr Ciliberti is fishing for a scapegoat and attempting to silence this newspaper. He is incorrect and these libel suits – deliberately filed for maximum impact – will fail in the face of the truth,” Saviour Balzan said.

Ciliberti said in a legal letter signed by lawyer Marco Ciliberti, that Janice Spiteri had visited the offices his company Al Nibras in April 2015, saying she had been referred to him by FTS procurement officer Edward Caruana.

Caruana, a former aide of education minister Evarist Bartolo, is now suspended from work after police investigations were launched into the way FTS direct orders were being issued.

Ciliberti said he had shown Spiteri catalogues of the Italian furniture company Camillo Sirianni, after she requested a quotation from Al Nibras; and said he relayed a quotation from Sirianni to Spiteri.

But he denied that his companies were exclusive agents for Camillo Sirianni, noting that local competitors had been successful in a number of FTS tenders utilizing products produced by the Italian firm.

MaltaToday has published contents of a right of reply by Camillo Sirianni, in which the company says the specifications for furniture carried in the FTS tender documents do not refer to a “certificate of design” but rather to applicable European standards issued or endorsed by the Malta Standards Authority.

Ciliberti has said that FTS tenders include furniture items not within Sirianni’s manufacturing capabilities, and that – as stated by MaltaToday –the FTS furniture specifications have been unaltered for ten years, and that Al Nibras has only been awarded tenders over the past four years. He also said that his companies were never awarded direct orders by the FTS, and that Al Nibras was never hand-delivered any cheques by Edward Caruana.

But MaltaToday has never alleged the former statements in its reports.

“All payments due to Al Nibras and Hangman by the FTS have been collected from the premises of the FTS against a signature on a record book retained by the Foundation for the purpose,” Ciliberti said said.

He also said the cheapest offers to FTS tenders were not always made by Al Nibras and denied having any connection with the firm L&A Camilleri, or that he had been investigated by the police.

Ciliberti opened separate libel suits against MaltaToday’s managing editor Saviour Balzan, editor Matthew Vella, and journalists Miriam Dalli and Tim Diacono for reporting on the story.

MaltaToday revealed earlier this month that a supplier who had tendered for school furniture had complained that former FTS procurement officer Edward Caruana – a long-time canvasser and driver of education minister Evarist Bartolo – had suggested contacting Ciliberti, whose business supplies school furniture.