Former Enemalta petroleum division head was paid thousands in commissions

Behind today's frail appearance, 68 year-old Alfred Mallia of Qormi was said to have been on the take during the time he served as Enemalta's head of petroleum division.

Aided by a walking stick, and suffering from an ailing disease, Mallia this morning was identified as the man who admitted during interrogations, to have received kickbacks from George Farrugia's Powerplan Limited, which represented oil giants Total.

Farrugia - who has received a presidential pardon - identified Mallia as the man who had requested the commissions after an agreement for oil storage was reached between Total and Enemalta.

Inspector Angelo Gafà who led the investigation, told the Court this morning that Farrugia explained the whole scheme of kickbacks, which also eventually included the former financial chief officer Tarcisio Mifsud.

Farrugia said that Total would pay him a commission of US$0.16c for every ton of oil stored at Enemalta's facilities. He would then split the commission with  Mallia, with monthly cash or cheque payments issued by Powerplan Ltd.

According to the witness, Mallia had also been paid a lump sum of US$10,000 after Enemalta used Total's bunkered supplies to circumvent industrial action at the harbour which had prevented tankers from entering port.

Total had started to sell more and more oil to Enemalta, and Mallia was kept on Farrugia's kick-back payroll, until the year 2,000 when Mallia was seriously injured in a traffic accident.

The witness said that although critically injured, Mallia had sent for him, telling him to go see Tarcisio Mifsud, the then chief financial officer at Enemalta about the commissions.

According to Mallia, he used to share his part of the commissions also with Mifsud, and Farrugia used to transfer the commission to Mifsud.

Tarcisio Mifsud has insistently been denying the accusation.