Combative Portelli flags transparency failures, unsure about oil trader’s pardon revocation

Shadow minister for energy Marthese Portelli has expressed strong reservations about the possible revocation of a presidential pardon granted to oil trader George Farrugia, on PBS’s Reporter.

“If the pardon is going to be revoked with the intention of preventing the arraignment of other persons, one should consider not revoking it,” she said, after new reports of Farrugia’s alleged bribery surfaced in MaltaToday.

Emails published in this newspaper show that Farrugia benefited from inside information at the Malta Resources Authorith through former director for energy regulation, Godwin Sant. Sant is now suspended from the energy ministry, where he was engaged as CEO of the Sustainable Energy and Water Conservation Unit.

“Sant, whom the Prime Minister said is a high-ranking official in the Malta Resources Authority, is also the person of trust of minister Konrad Mizzi,” the MP said, taking cue from reports in the Malta Independent.

Standing in for Mizzi, minister for the economy Chris Cardona denied Sant was a person of trust, but left in a post he occupied for many years, and then made to resign.

While Cardona defended his government’s recorded of governance in introducing the Whistleblower’s Act and removing the time-barring of political corruption cases, Portelli was in a combative mood, alleging that government tenders were being made to such detailed specification that only the government’s preferred bidder could possibly satisfy them.

Cardona defended his government’s decision not to publish the “commercially sensitive” contract with Shanghai Electric Power, the Chinese state-owned that purchased a stake in Enemalta for €320 million.

Host Saviour Balzan pointed out that whenever there is a request for the publication of government contracts, there is a tendency to hide behind confidentiality clauses and claims of commercial sensitivity.

“This was your criticism of the BWSC contract, three years ago,” he told Cardona about the then Labour Opposition’s demands to see the contract for the procurement of the BWSC turbine at the Delimara extension.

Cardona instead deflected the conversation onto Opposition leader Simon Busuttil’s refusal to publish the finances of the PN so as not to prejudice his party’s financers, saying this “reflected the Nationalist party’s double standards”.

“So it’s OK for Simon Busuttil not to publish commercial contracts, but the government, which has the commercial interests of the entire country at stake, has to publish its contracts?”

Portelli was quick to reply: “Your party rallied around the cry of ‘transparency’ and yet you are presenting a 15-page [memorandum of understanding]… the BWSC contract was over 1000 pages long.”

Fuel prices

Portelli also reiterated the need for the government to publish its hedging contracts on the purchase of oil, after fuel prices failed to follow suit as the international price of oil fell.

“It’s unclear whether the current high price of fuel is in fact due to hedging because the contracts have not been released. What was recently said in parliament is that the price will fall when the hedging contracts expire – but we are yet to see the contracts,” Portelli said.

Cardona however promised that a price fall reflecting the global price of oil would manifest itself within the coming days, but he defended long-term hedges, calling them “an insurance policy for stability” and that the dramatic fall in oil prices was impossible to predict.

Reporter is presented by Saviour Balzan and airs every Monday at 20:40 on TVM2, with a repeat at 21:55 on TVM.