Chief Justice admonishes AG, police on 2013 oil scandal: 'Are you waiting for everyone to die?'

Chief Justice slams police and AG over years-long delay and extensions to oil scandal hearings

The Constitutional Court, presided by the Chief Justice, said that in 27 sittings for the compilation of evidence against Mifsud (pictured above), nothing had happened in 15 of these sittings.
The Constitutional Court, presided by the Chief Justice, said that in 27 sittings for the compilation of evidence against Mifsud (pictured above), nothing had happened in 15 of these sittings.

The Enemalta oil scandal’s prosecutions of 2013 were crippled by court delays from the prosecution and the actions of the Attorney General, with a majority of court cases achieving “absolutely nothing”, Malta’s Chief Justice and two judges declared in a fair hearing complaint. 

The ineffectiveness of the Maltese prosecution in the oil scandal after 2013 were placed in a harsh light by the Constitutional Court, in a fair hearing complaint by former Enemalta functionary Tarcisio Mifsud. 

The Constitutional Court, presided by the Chief Justice, said that in 27 sittings for the compilation of evidence against Mifsud, nothing had happened in 15 of these sittings. 

Additionally, after the Attorney General issued charges for Mifsud to be tried before a Criminal Court in 2015, it prevented him from a summary procedure by imposing a condition to have two other criminal suspects testify. 

This prevented the rapid resolution of the Mifsud case, extending the process by three years, with 14 sittings “in which absolutely nothing happened.” 

“It is clear that in the proceedings against Tarcisio Mifsud, over six years, in two-thirds of the 41 sittings, or 29, no form of evidence was presented! This kind of delay cannot be attributed to the courts in any way since it made its utmost to accommodate the sittings as regularly as possible, but it is undeniably the unique shortcoming of the prosecution as well as of the Attorney General, which tied the hands of the magistrates’ court.” 

Tarcisio Mifsud was formerly a member of the Enemalta fuel procurement committee as the State energy company’s financial controller. He was accused along with former Enemalta petroleum chief Alfred Mallia of corruption and trading in influence, largely on claims by State’s evidence and businessman George Farrugia that he had paid them Lm40,000 (€100,000) in cash for him to win Enemalta tenders for the supply of oil. 

READ ALSOREVEALED | Kickbacks paid for Enemalta oil purchases to procurement official

The main suspects in the oil scandal are former Enemalta chairman and businessman Tancred Tabone and the petrochemist Frank Sammut, both charged with corruption, revealed by MaltaToday in 2013 of having been paid sums of money through George Farrugia and Trafigure, for the alleged award of fuel procurement contracts. Tabone’s business partners in bunkering firm Island Bunker Oils – the Virtù Ferries group director Francis Portelli, and Cassar Shipping boss Anthony Cassar, were then charged with corruption and money laundering. Tabone’s sons, Portelli and Cassar remain in business together through fuel bunkering company Valletta Bunkers and Valletta Petroleum Holdings. 

Tarcisio Mifsud, today 76, protested the extended duration of the proceedings against him: he sat for 27 sittings between March 2013 and October 2015 in the compilation of evidence against him. The Attorney General, Peter Grech, then issued the bill of indictment to have Mifsud tried in a criminal court, but instantly delayed the possibility for a summary procedure by conditioning the court to hear the testimony of co-accused Alfred Mallia and Tancred Tabone. 

This led to a referral to the Constitutional court that suspended the criminal court hearing, and then dragged on for three more years. As it turned out, in December 2016 the oil scandal suspects Tancred Tabone, Frank Sammut and Alfred Mallia declared they would not testify given the pending criminal case against them. 

Yet for the two years that followed, despite protests from the Mifsud defence, the case dragged on. Mallia died in November 2019. 

“This kind of behaviour has breached Tarcisio Mifsud’s right to a fair hearing,” the three-judge Constitutional Court presided by the Chief Justice declared. “At his advanced age, he has every right to have these proceedings take place within a reasonable peirod of time, even as one of the co-accused Alfred Mallia passed away over the course of these delays. So what is the prosecution waiting for? That all the witnesses die, including Tarcisio Mifsud?” 

The Court ordered that proceedings against Mifsud be closed within four months. 

Mifsud had been charged in court by Angelo Gafà, now Commissioner of Police, who after Labour’s election in 2013 was placed inside the Malta Security Service. The prosecution alleges that Mifsud received commissions on oil tenders given to French oil company Total and split the kickbacks with the late Alfred Mallia, between 1998 and 2003. Mifsud retired from Enemalta in October 2003. 

George Farrugia – the local agent of Total, granted a presidential pardon in return for information on the oil scandal after he was outed by MaltaToday in its reports – told police his relationship with Mallia started in connection with oil storage at Ħas-Saptan. Mallia facilitated a storage agreement, in return for a ‘commission’. In 1999, Enemalta tapped into Total’s 20,000 tonnes of gasoil stored at Ħas-Saptan, when a port workers strike that same year left Enemalta’s oil reserves running low. 

In 2000, Mallia was injured in a traffic accident; when Farrugia visited him in hospital, Mallia told him to speak to Tarcisio Mifsud. Farrugia claims he was told that Mifsud had to get “what Alfred Mallia used to get”, and from then on started paying him on every consignment. 

Mifsud’s lawyer is Edward Gatt. 

Money laundering case 

Also pending in court is the money laundering case against Portelli and Cassar: a judge has already ruled that the Attorney General had breached the fundamental human rights of the two men by delaying their case for over six years and ordered the prosecution to close its evidence by the end of 2019. 

The two men are being charged for their role as directors in Island Bunker Oils and its subsidiaries Eldaren Shipping, Oarsman Maritime, Anchor Oils, FP Holdings, AOH Ltd, Gringrams Holdings, Island Oils Holdings and Anchor Bay Maritime, for having corrupted former Enemalta chairman Tancred Tabone and Frank Sammut, the former chief executive of Mediterranean Offshore Bunkering Company Limited (MOBC), between the years 2002 and 2005. 

Portelli and Cassar were also charged with complicity to trading in influence in public tenders and money laundering. 

Although proceedings began with great momentum, this soon dwindled and no progress was registered in the case for six whole years. Between 2015 and 2019, 22 sittings were held in which practically nothing was done, after which the prosecution declared in no uncertain terms that it was not going to declare its evidence closed before Frank Sammut testified. The end result was that the case has been stuck for six years. Letters rogatory to Swiss prosecutors, where the accused used Swiss banks to hide their transactions, had taken an inexplicable 11 months to be sent. 

Judge Joseph Zammit McKeon had found a violation of the right to a fair hearing. “It is most clear and manifest that the reasons for the delay were due to shortcomings by the defendant (AG) and the way in which the prosecution of the applicants is being conducted. It does not emerge that the delays were due to the actions of the plaintiffs. Neither of the court.”