Tonio Fenech denies signing contracts on election eve

Former Finance Minister Tonio Fenech has denied signing any contracts on the eve of the 9 March general election, insisting that he only approved payments for legitimate services rendered to the government in 2012.

Fenech was replying to accusations by his successor, Edward Scicluna, who in recent days fleetingly revealed that Fenech had signed an agreement worth €300,000 a mere 24 hours before the general election.

On Monday, Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said that his predecessor had signed off a number of invoices to one company on election eve, 8 March - totalling around €450,000 - for public relations services linked to the 2013 budget.
Scicluna said that he accidently discovered the media-related expenditure after ministry officials informed him that there were no funds available for the rest of the expenditure.

However, speaking to MaltaToday, Fenech said that the approval signed on 8 March wasn't "extraordinary" and explained that on that day he had approved the payment for a marketing campaign carried out by a single company in the run-up to the 2013 budget, which was ultimately defeated on 10 December 2012.

"On 8 March, I did not sign any contracts of any sort on behalf of the government. I had only approved the final payment of €296,763, excluding VAT, for a marketing campaign, which was awarded by an expression of interest months before. We were only settling our dues and there is absolutely nothing extraordinary in this."

The Opposition MP added that among other things, the marketing campaign consisted of newspaper and television adverts in the run-up to the 2013 budget he presented in December 2012.

Fenech also noted that since the payments were issued in March, the funds were extracted from this year's budget, adding that this might have upset the current finance minister because it affected his current ministry budget.