Freedom of Information appeals tribunal: ARMS must show MaltaToday bills paid by PL, PN

The billing company that processes payments for Malta’s energy and water services providers, has to show MaltaToday the outstanding duties that the Labour and Nationalist Parties have with ARMS (Automated Revenue Management Services).  

The company is jointly owned by energy provider Enemalta and the Water Services Corporation.

The decision comes from the Information and Data Protection Appeals Tribunal, three years after MaltaToday filed an appeal against a decision by the Information and Data Protection Commissioner.

In 2013, MaltaToday filed a Freedom of Information request so that ARMS would reveal how much it is owed in outstanding electricity and water bills by the two parties or their holding companies.

MaltaToday insisted that unlike regular consumers, the two parties contested democratic elections and ultimately selected who would be minister responsible for energy affairs. As such, this could allow them to negotiate better terms of repayment of their bills.

MaltaToday had told ARMS and the IDPC that consumers are at a disadvantage to political parties, which cannot be considered “normal clients” as ARMS insists they are. “We argued with ARMS, and the IDPC, that political parties field for election the very people who might end up being energy minister, or Enemalta chairman, or WSC chairman, even chief executive. The incestuous relationship between party and state in Malta is symbolised by the fact that ARMS has granted political parties extremely generous terms of credit on their pending energy bills,” MaltaToday had said.

ARMS refused the request, applying an Article 5 exemption that ARMS was a commercial company owned by the government.

After ARMS turned down the request, the IDPC agreed, saying that the information was precluded from being revealed because the documents were “held by a commercial partnership in which the public authority has a controlling interest, in so far as the documents related to the commercial activities of the commercial partnership.”

MaltaToday appealed the refusal, saying the IDPC had not carried out an appropriate public interest test on whether disclosing the information would be of more benefit to the public, than were it to be kept secret.

ARMS told the Appeals Tribunal, chaired by lawyer Anna Mallia, that it was bound by confidentiality and that political parties were clients just like any other consumer.

In its decision, the IDPC appeals tribunal agreed with MaltaToday that the documents requested were not exempt from the Freedom of Information Act since the documents requested did not pertain to the commercial activities of ARMS’s operations.

Additionally, the Appeals Tribunal said that the FOIA’s definition of public authority did not apply to corporations, but to ministries, departments and agencies in which the government had a controlling stake.

The Appeals Tribunal said that in terms of the FOIA’s own definition of public authority, ARMS Limited could not be considered a public authority.

“Additionally, the information requested does not concern documents related to ARMS’s commercial operations, but with its own clients, which are holding companies of the political parties.”

In her decision, Anna Mallia overturned the IDPC’s decision, and ordered ARMS to furnish MaltaToday with its requested documents.

The 15 December decision has to yet to be acceded to by ARMS.

In 2014, MaltaToday reported that it had information that the Nationalist and Labour parties had outstanding bills of a combined €2.5 million, with €1.9 million owed by the PN.

MaltaToday believes that political parties have for years enjoyed protracted terms of payment, by being accorded repayment programmes that common taxpayers are not granted, and other sorts of benefits by the state-owned utility companies.

ARMS was until recently headed by chief executive Carmen Ciantar, a Labour activist who was publicly visible during electoral rallies as part of the selected audience seated behind Joseph Muscat. Even Enemalta’s new chief executive, Frederick Azzopardi, was elected for Labour on the Mdina local council; while former chairman Charles Mangion was later elected to the House at a casual election.

While political parties retain an influential hold on publicly-owned corporations, various clients who defaulted on their dues have been presented with judicial letters to pay up within a stipulated time, or have their services disconnected.