Lawyer Georg Sapiano paid €330,000 on Arriva reform

The design for the new public transport routes cost an impressive €640,000, and were devised by English firm Halcrow and the law firm led by former Nationalist candidate, Georg Sapiano.

Sapiano's Aequitas Legal alone was paid over €330,000, while another €200,000 was paid to other companies.

As Arriva ends a disastrous two-year sojourn in Malta, amassing debts of just under €70 million, the government is picking up the pieces of the transport system that has now been nationalised.

But many are left wondering whether public transport will truly ever enjoy a new lease of life.

Under the new routes devised in July 2011, Arriva introduced longer routes crisscrossing the entire island so that it could turn unprofitable routes into money-making trips and carry more commuters on its bendy-buses.

But the longer routes complicated arrival times, and the reduction in bus fleet made journeys less frequent. The bendy buses, purchased from the Tumas Group, a former shareholder in Arriva Malta, turned out to be a veritable nightmare: too big for Maltese roads.

Sapiano's involvement with Transport Malta and the public transport reform it ushered in 2011 is owed to his friendship with Charles Demicoli, formerly the head of the transport authority ADT. He later was appointed chairman of the Kordin Grain Terminal.

Sapiano retained his contacts with the transport ministry under Austin Gatt and his personal secretary Manuel Delia. Delia, who assisted Sapiano when he presented a TVM chat show in the 1990s, today works for South African precious metals trading firm Borderless.

Arriva is reported to have lost almost €1 million every month since it started operations.

The inauguration of the new public transport system, in which Gatt promised a "revolution", cost a staggering €82,000 to stage.

Sapiano was revealed in parliamentary questions to have received over €890,000 in legal contracts by successive PN administrations. The contracts were awarded to the lawyer'' firms Sapiano & Associates and Aequitas Legal, mostly by direct order.

Transport minister Joe Mizzi has said that there was no information whether the contracts awarded to Sapiano and his firm by Transport Malta, worth over €333,000, were given by direct order or tender. In 2010 alone, TM awarded his firm €131,504.

Over a span of 10 years between 2002 and 2012, Sapiano received €243,010 from the Occupational Health and Safety Authority and over €113,000 by direct order from the Water Services Corporation between 2000 and 2006. His firms also received a number of contracts by the Prime Minister's Office and by social services agencies such as Appogg and Sedqa.

Sapiano contested the general election on the PN ticket in 2008, garnering just 58 first-count votes.