Danish CEO denies bribery

The CEO of a Danish company commissioned to supply equipment for Enemalta's Delimara power station has denied bribery allegations but according to the Labour Party leader could not vouch for the firm's Maltese representative Joseph Mizzi.

Soren Barkholt, CEO of Burmeister and Wain, the Scandinavian Contractor (BWSC), accompanied by sales and marketing director Martin Kok Jensen, flew to Malta for the day to meet Auditor General Anthony Mifsud, who is investigating the way the €200 million contract for a new power plant was awarded.

The Danish team dismissed the claims made over the past weeks in the local media that bribery was involved in securing the contract and the allegations of corruption involving BWSC published in the Danish newspaper Brsen.

On Friday, Dr Muscat presented the auditor general with a dossier containing newspaper articles alleging that BWSC and its Japanese mother company Mitsui handed over millions of euros to win contracts in several countries.

Later that day, the company denied the bribery claims, saying an investigation by Danish police had failed to find any evidence to support them.

Mr Barkholt repeated the denial yesterday after a meeting with the auditor. Although no details of the meeting were divulged, Mr Barkholt insisted his company did everything according to law and it had nothing to hide.

However, speaking to the media following a meeting with the BWSC representatives, Dr Muscat quoted Mr Barkholt as saying his company had not bribed anyone in Malta but they could not vouch for Mr Mizzi.

Dr Muscat said Mr Barkholt told him "Joe Mizzi is his own man", when asked directly if the company had bribed anyone to be granted the contract.

When asked whether the Labour Party had tried to speak to Mr Mizzi, MP Evarist Bartolo said several journalists had been trying to do so for months and he had always refused. Labour had been expecting him to attend the meeting with BWSC but he did not turn up.

Dr Muscat said his party was not satisfied with Mr Barkholt's explanations over how it was selected for the contract.

He said Mr Barkholt and Mr Kok Jensen were well prepared to answer questions regarding claims of corruption in the Philippines and Sri Lanka but failed to reply to queries regarding the Malta contract.

This, he said, left the party more concerned than before.

The meeting served to confirm that the plant the company was being paid to install in Malta was the first of its kind it had ever been commissioned to build and it was a "prototype", Dr Muscat said.

But Mr Barkholt defended the chosen technology, which he said would save the country between €25 and €30 million a year.

"It is a fantastic technology. It is top of the range even with regard to pollution. It is a flagship project which cleans up all emissions from A to Z. It will be the first of this type in Europe and will be a project for the pride of this country which will be at the forefront to tackle climate change problems.

"You don't have natural or nuclear gas so you have to rely on energy available to produce electricity in the most efficient way.

We are producing electricity with an amazing 51 per cent efficiency, compared to the 27 per cent you have on existing equipment. So there will be a leap in technology," Mr Barkholt said.

Upon leaving the auditor's office, Mr Barkholt described the meeting as "pleasant and friendly", adding that the allegations in the Danish press, and the dossier presented by Dr Muscat on Friday, were not discussed in that meeting.

The newspaper Brsen and Dr Muscat had mentioned Mr Barkholt as the person who gave his go-ahead for someone to be bribed in the Philippines in 1999. But Mr Barkholt denied the allegation, saying Danish police had investigated this claim too and had found it was untrue.

Referring to the €4 million commission which the Opposition party was claiming Mr Mizzi received, Mr Barkholt said the fee was "substantially lower". When pressed for a figure, he refused to reply saying those were private matters.

Asked whether they knew that Mr Mizzi was a former employee of Enemalta Corporation, Mr Barkholt and Mr Kok Jensen said they knew Mr Mizzi "was the right technical person for the job".

They said they had not asked Mr Mizzi for a CV.

"We need a representative here on a day-to-day basis and it is good to have someone with a technical mind and sound local knowledge."