Caruana Galizia public inquiry: former PN secretary-general says Labour's gas power station plan was similar to presentation he was given in 2009

Paul Borg Olivier tells Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry that Paul Apap Bologna had tried selling him plans for a gas power station in 2009 with the promise of 'we will do our bit, if you do yours'

12 February 2020, 2:16pm
by Matthew Agius

4 min read

The public inquiry is looking into the actions of the State and whether more could have been done to prevent the murder from happening

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Businessman Paul Apap Bologna tried selling the gas power station plan to the Nationalist government in 2009 but then secretary-general Paul Borg Olivier turned down the plan.

Four years later, a plan very similar to the one Borg Olivier had been shown, was presented by the Labour Party as part of its energy plan for the 2013 election campaign.

“When one looks at the context of the decision in 2009 and the PL proposal in 2013 at the beginning of the electoral campaign, I felt that the person who came to try and sell the project to me had gone to sell it to Labour. As far as I know it was the same person,” Borg Olivier said.

He was testifying in Wednesday’s session of the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry.

Borg Olivier said Apap Bologna’s proposal in 2009 included the foreign company Gasol and GEM Holdings, which included Maltese family businesses.

“One of the things which leapt out to me during the conversation, was Apap Bologna’s comment: ‘the decision is yours, we will do our bit if you do yours.’ I asked what this was about and was met by silence and a half-smile,” Borg Olivier said.

Asked whether Apap Bologna informed him that he had spoken to some government representative at the time, Borg Olivier answered in the negative.

“No, but the comment about ‘doing your bit’ made me suspicious,” Borg Olivier told the inquiry, implying that the comment may have been a suggestion to donate money to the party.

“From the PN side, at least in my time, the party did not... depend strongly on donations, which required compromises,” Borg Olivier said.

He also testified that at the same time Christian Kalin from Henley and Partners, a citizenship agency, had approached the PN with a proposal for the introduction of a golden passport scheme. “Kalin had presented a document but the party was against the sale of citizenship because it believed in the sovereignty of the state in passport sales,” Borg Olivier said.

Henley and Partners were later awarded a concession by the Labour government to sell Maltese citizenship as part of the Individual Investor Programme.

“I can also say that it is a bit of a misnomer to think of there being big donations. Political parties rely on the little donated by the many, at least in the case of the PN,” Borg Olivier reiterated.

The inquiry also heard the testimony of journalists Caroline Muscat, Monique Agius and Miguela Xuereb, who described incidents of harassment by PL supporters. Muscat said that this tied in with an OPM-orchestrated disinformation campaign. "With the dominance of party media in Malta, there is little that independent journalists can do to counter such a wave of disinformation. When it is mixed with hate-bating of the handful of journalists who work on investigative stories you end up with one side dominating the narrative.”

16:01 This brings to an end today's live blog. Thanks for following. Kurt Sansone

16:00 Josef Caruana and Matthew Carbone are to be summoned on Monday, Glen Bedingfield on Wednesday. At some point, Neville Gafa would also have to testify. Kurt Sansone

15:58 The lawyers are thrashing out who would be testifying next time. “At some point, Glen Bedingfield, Tony Zarb and the other people mentioned today would have to testify,” Azzopardi says. Kurt Sansone

15:57 This concludes today's testimony. The inquiry continues on Monday at 2:30pm. Kurt Sansone

15:55 “The whole event was very traumatic. The whole event was very State violence, psychological type of thing,” she says, voice quavering. Kurt Sansone

15:54 Monique Agius says that she had sent the police a WeTransfer link of the footage in November and a couple of weeks ago she received a phone call from the police since the link had expired. WeTransfer links are valid for a short period of time. Kurt Sansone

15:52 “We later identified the people holding us in as Mark Gauci, Ronnie Vella and others. One of them was employed as a driver with Spazju Kreattiv when they had no cars,” she says. Kurt Sansone

15:51 “Paul Caruana Galizia was asking, who the people were and I was asking on what legal basis they were keeping us there. At one point, they opened the door and we found Matthew Carbone, who took over OPM communications after Kurt Farrugia. We were screaming at him ‘who are these people?’, ‘why didn't you let us ask questions?’,” Agius says. Kurt Sansone

15:49 Monique Agius presents footage of the incident to the board. Kurt Sansone

15:48 The journalists are asked whether it is something normal for journalists to be locked in rooms after press conferences. “No, it never happened before and it shouldn't happen,” Xuereb replies. Kurt Sansone

15:47 “We asked to leave the room several times,” Xuereb says. “Paul Caruana Galizia tried to open the door but I think it was locked.” Kurt Sansone

15:46 Xuereb says that the people did not allow the journalists to leave the room. “They were unresponsive to our questions. They let us leave after about seven minutes but we didn't know who these people were.” Kurt Sansone

15:45 Miguela Xuereb says that at around 2am or 2:30am on the 29 journalists with a press card were ushered into Castille from a side door. “There was a conference with other journalists. Muscat delivered the conference about the pardon to Melvin Theuma and had answered some questions. After the presser finished everyone left except the journalists. Then some people blocked the exits.” Kurt Sansone

15:44 “I say 28/29 because I arrived at Castille at 7pm on the 28th with other journalists. We were waiting to ask questions. Shortly after 7:30pm there had been ministers and we learned there was a cabinet meeting. We were trying to ask questions... on the 28th the police had put up barriers between the activists and the journalists and Castille, keeping us to the side to prevent us from stopping Joseph Muscat from going down and asking questions,” she recounts. Kurt Sansone

15:43 Miguela Xuereb is asked the same question. The only time she had reported any harassment was that incident of 28 and 29 November when she was locked in Castille. Kurt Sansone

15:42 “I had managed to identify who he was, but the police had not spoken to me about the report. I didn't have time to follow up because of exams,” Monique Agius says. Kurt Sansone

15:41 Monique Agius recounts another instance when MPs were locked inside Parliament because of the protests and at one point a group of parliamentarians had gone through an area where there was no press. “I had tried to ask a question to Clint Camilleri and an old man came in and started pushing me and journalist Matthew Agius had to intervene.” Kurt Sansone

15:39 Monique Agius: “There were a number of incidents during the protests, but there was an incident during the MEP election where I asked Joseph Muscat whether he would resign, and he said that in 30 seconds I would be leaving from this room. Then he grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around. There was mobile phone footage of the incident,” she says. Kurt Sansone

15:36 Monique Agius takes the witness stand. She is asked whether in her job as journalist, did she ever meet with harassment or victimisation. Kurt Sansone

15:35 Daphne's sister leaves the courtroom sobbing loudly as Caroline Muscat finishes testifying. Kurt Sansone

15:29 Journalists Monique Agius and Miguela Xuereb from Newsbook are due to testify next. Kurt Sansone

15:29 Muscat describes Daphne: “She was relentless and wouldn't be taken down. The more you challenged her, the further she would go.” Kurt Sansone

15:28 “Daphne and I became friends in the last year before she was killed. After the 2017 election something changed. We were all a bit in shock... sometimes she was in doubt whether she could continue or not or whether it was worth it. In the days before her death she had WhatsApped me and said: ‘Car let’s have lunch next week’ and something in the sense that felt like time was running out. We never had the opportunity to have that lunch.” Kurt Sansone

15:26 Muscat says that the calls linking the Caruana Galizia murder to oil smuggling came from the Office of the Prime Minister in the first week after the assassination. She had spoken to journalists who had reported with certainty that the death was to do with oil smuggling and they said the calls had come from the OPM. Kurt Sansone

15:24 Muscat tells the inquiry that the person who posted the doctored photo involving MaltaToday was a certain Tom Lippiett, who claims to be a lawyer in Malta who works for an i-gaming company. Kurt Sansone

15:21 “The cyber-attacks were traced to IP addresses in the Ukraine where you have factories of hackers who are paid to take sites down,” she says. Kurt Sansone

15:20 “We've experienced several attacks on our site. One of them has been reported to the COE platform, one of five unresolved by the Maltese government. We have had to completely overhaul how our site is hosted and now have three different sites. The attacks were weekly,” she says, but they peaked on the Vitals and Streamcast investigations. These focussed on Konrad Mizzi's dealings. Kurt Sansone

15:19 Muscat says that when she pointed out that the law had changed, all she got was ‘your email has been acknowledged’. Kurt Sansone

15:18 “This is impeding my work as a journalist,” she says. Kurt Sansone

15:17 Asked how she knew it was government policy she says: “I have it in correspondence with DOI.” Kurt Sansone

15:16 “When I show them my international press card… we have this really bad system where the government decides who is a journalist and who isn't. Just this week in an email conversation with DOI, I want to receive the calendar of events and I am being denied. Why should I register with the DOI, we worked to change the law so why is there policy preventing us from accessing this information?” Kurt Sansone

15:15 She says there was one case filed when Henley & Partners were threatening us with a lawsuit, and there was a photomontage of a MaltaToday masthead and a sponsored post by us calling Kristian Kalin a murderer. The cybercrime unit had identified the perpetrator but no criminal action was taken against him. Kurt Sansone

15:13 Comodini Cachia asks Muscat whether any reports were received and registered by the police. Kurt Sansone

15:13 Muscat talks of the problems her team she was having with the police when trying to file a series of reports. “When we go to the police station we end up spending two hours justifying that we are journalists because we don't have a DOI press card.” Kurt Sansone

15:10 “Even after her death, the idea that it is OK to insult and speak of aggression and murdering people as a joke has become open and accepted. You see memes with ‘one witch disappears and another one appears’, with my face and government officials saying you need a handful of more bombs,” she recounts. Kurt Sansone

15:08 “After she was murdered the dehumanising against her continued but spread to other critics of the government. Her family has been targeted repeatedly. The question of where is the laptop or why was the car parked outside were constantly being repeated... diverting attention away from where the latest scandal is,” Muscat answers. Kurt Sansone

15:07 Comodini Cachia asks whether there was a change in the targets of the hate campaign after Caruana Galizia's murder. Kurt Sansone

15:06 She says that with the dominance of party media in Malta, there is little that independent journalists can do to counter such a wave of disinformation. “When it is mixed with hate-bating of the handful of journalists who work on investigative stories you end up with one side dominating the narrative.” Kurt Sansone

15:05 Muscat says that online harassment ties closely to disinformation. “What happens is that online channels are flooded with counter-narratives which are often blatantly untrue. One clear disinformation campaign is the Truth Project. This was a campaign, which countered the Daphne Project... where is the laptop, shifting blame, claiming the murder came from the PN, all the disinformation came from the Truth Project.” Kurt Sansone

15:03 “The groups would go dormant and then resurface when political activity was high,” she continues. Kurt Sansone

15:02 Muscat says that after The Shift's expose on the groups, former president Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca announced that she was leaving the groups and then condemned hate speech in general. “The prime minister [Joseph Muscat] however had never condemned the groups’ behaviour, saying they weren't hate speech and only left them after a number of calls for him to do so,” Muscat says. Kurt Sansone

15:00 “Former presidents, most MPs, aspiring political candidates were all members of the groups,” Muscat says. Kurt Sansone

15:00 Muscat says there are criteria which need to be met and these included past instances of threats to journalists or activists, the involvement of senior government officials, a marked blurring of roles or propagandists. This list of criteria was published by Bloomberg. Kurt Sansone

14:59 Comodini Cachia asks about state-sponsored mass trolling. How did she conclude it was state-sponsored? Kurt Sansone

14:58 Muscat continues that a certain Angele Camilleri, now a PL councillor, was another one of the group's admins. Kurt Sansone

14:57 “We found out through whistleblowers. People were disgusted by the calls for street parties and so on after Daphne's death… After a girl posted about a Henley and Partners meeting in London, she was immediately demonised and there were calls for her to be stopped, raped and so on,” Muscat says. Kurt Sansone

14:56 Lawyer Therese Comodini Cachia asks about the party membership requirement and the fact that the administrators worked at the justice ministry. Kurt Sansone

14:56 “You cannot have such a coherent narrative built in such a short period of time. It had to be orchestrated,” she says. Kurt Sansone

14:55 “What we see in these groups are constant, counter-narratives and the spread of blatantly untrue information. Malta is one of the few countries where we have managed to prove state-sponsored trolling,” Muscat says. Kurt Sansone

14:55 She says the people she has just mentioned were active participants. Kurt Sansone

14:53 Muscat says that government sympathisers and public officials like Josef Caruana, Tony Zarb, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Mark Farrugia, Rosianne Cutajar, Neville Gafa, Karl Stagno Navarra and Glenn Bedingfield would participate in the trolling. “All this was happening whilst Kurt Farrugia was heading the government’s communications department,” she adds. Kurt Sansone

14:49 She says that Facebook's algorithms show users what they wanted to see and this effect was amplified by membership in the group. Kurt Sansone

14:49 Muscat presents the inquiry board with a dossier of her findings. She explains that the main findings were that online discourse in Malta was increasingly polarised and abrasive, there was involvement of government officials and online trolling was subject to a high degree of coordination. Kurt Sansone

14:48 “We wanted to see how Caruana Galizia was being presented. What we saw was beyond anything we could have expected. She was depicted as a witch, as a monster. People from the OPM, like Neville Gafa, would be posting dehumanising memes. The posts preceded the murder and carried on afterwards. The groups were there for seven years and were built whilst the Labour Party was in Opposition,” she says. Kurt Sansone

14:45 “The groups required you to show Labour Party membership before you can access them,” Muscat says. Kurt Sansone

14:44 Muscat says that one of the first things The Shift had done after Caruana Galizia's murder was to observe a pattern of derogatory remarks relating to the murder. They monitored for six months, six secret and closed online groups with 60,000 members. “You had to show your membership of the Labour Party to join the groups and we did so through whistleblowers, who were disgusted by the content of the groups.” Kurt Sansone

14:42 Caroline Muscat walks up to the witness stand and takes the oath. Lawyer Therese Comodini Cachia for the Caruana Galizia family explains that the witness could tell of the harassment she had suffered as a journalist and how reporting on the government could affect public opinion. Kurt Sansone

14:41 Borg Olivier’s testimony is over. The Shift News journalist Caroline Muscat is due to testify next. Kurt Sansone

14:40 “I can also say that it is a bit of a misnomer to think of there being big donations. Political parties rely on the little donated by the many, at least in the case of the PN,” Borg Olivier says. Kurt Sansone

14:40 The witness says that Christian Kalin from Henley and Partners, a citizenship agency, had approached PN at around the same time. Kalin had presented a document but the party was against the sale of citizenship because it believed in the sovereignty of the state in passport sales. Kurt Sansone

14:38 Borg Olivier continues: “From the PN side, at least in my time, the party did not... depend strongly on donations, which required compromises.” Kurt Sansone

14:37 “No, but the comment about ‘doing your bit’ made me suspicious,” Borg Olivier says. Kurt Sansone

14:36 Jason Azzopardi asks Borg Olivier: “Did Apap Bologna tell you that he had spoken to some government representative at the time?” Kurt Sansone

14:35 “When one looks at the context of the decision in 2009 and the PL proposal in 2013 at the beginning of the electoral campaign, I felt that the person who came to try and sell the project to me had gone to sell it to Labour. As far as I know it was the same person,” he says. Kurt Sansone

14:34 Borg Olivier says that he had been given indications of who they were - big business families - but was not told directly who they were. Kurt Sansone

14:33 Judge Michael Mallia asks about the families behind the gas power station project. Kurt Sansone

14:32 “The line I had taken at the time was that the government has its plan for energy... and the meeting ended there,” Borg Olivier says. Kurt Sansone

14:31 Borg Olivier presents the inquiry with a story by Daphne Caruana Galizia on 25 October 2013, which stated that the project relied heavily on the Labour landslide victory of the time. He also presents an abridged version of the Auditor General's report on Electrogas, which highlighted a number of shortcomings. In its closing paragraph, it refers to Simon Busuttil's listing of similarities between the finalised contract and the presentation given by GEM in 2009. The Auditor General at the time said its mandate did not extend to political parties. Kurt Sansone

14:29 “The only difference was the gas supply agreement for 20 years changed to 18 years and the power generation capacity of the power station was different,” Borg Olivier says. Kurt Sansone

14:28 Comparing the proposals in this presentation and the request for proposals issued by the government in 2013, finds great similarities, Borg Olivier says. Kurt Sansone

14:27 Borg Olivier says that foreign company Gasol was involved in the proposed project, as was GEM (greener energy for Malta) Holdings, which was set up at the time. “One of the things which leapt out to me during the conversation, was Apap Bologna’s comment: ‘the decision is yours, we will do our bit if you do yours.’ I asked what this was about and was met by silence and a half-smile.” Kurt Sansone

14:25 “My first reaction to Apap Bologna was that as we had just awarded a concession to build a new power station [the BWSC plant], how can we do this one too? He insisted that the government would make arrangements with the private and public sector and that the power station was not a foreign investment but also involved Maltese family businesses.” Kurt Sansone

14:23 Borg Olivier says that the presentation he was given was almost identical to the power station built years later [under a Labour administration], “complete with LNG terminal, ship and everything.” Kurt Sansone

14:22 Borg Olivier recounts: “I was secretary-general of the Nationalist Party between June 2008 and June 2013. In the spring of 2009, around May or June, businessman Paul Apap Bologna had asked to see me. I greeted him in my office and he gave me a Power Point presentation on a gas-fired power station.” Kurt Sansone

14:20 Lawyer Jason Azzopardi, appearing for the Caruana Galizia family, asks him about an incident in 2009. Kurt Sansone

14:20 Lawyer Paul Borg Olivier, the former secretary-general of the PN, is summoned to the witness stand. Kurt Sansone

14:19 Good afternoon. We are at another sitting of the public inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Kurt Sansone

"Even after her death, the idea that it is OK to insult and speak of aggression and murdering people as a joke has become open and accepted. You see memes with ‘one witch disappears and another one appears’, with my face and government officials saying you need a handful of more bombs,” Muscat recounted.

Background to the inquiry

The inquiry will have to determine whether any wrongful action or omission by or within any State entity could have facilitated the assassination of Caruana Galizia or failed to prevent it, particularly whether the State knew or should have known of risks to the journalist’s life “at the time” of her murder.

It must also consider whether the State not only knew of, but “caused” risks to Caruana Galizia’s life.

Although its terms of reference allow for restrictions on the publication of the inquiry's report, it specifies that the board must provide the family with the opportunity to read the full report, including the redacted parts, without being granted copies of the text underlying any redactions. The family are also prohibited from divulging the redacted content.

The inquiry board, made up of Justice Emeritus Michael Mallia, Chief Justice Emeritus Joseph Said Pullicino and Judge Abigail Lofaro, is bound to present the inquiry report, once it is completed, to the Prime Minister and Attorney General, to notify the public that the inquiry has been concluded and presented to the Prime Minister, and, most notably, to publish the report within eight working days from when it is delivered to the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister has to table the report in Parliament within five days of receiving it.

The inquiry, which started in December, must be completed within nine months.

Matthew Agius is Senior Reporter on Law and Court Affairs at MaltaToday. He is also a Leg...