Austin Gatt met oil trader George Farrugia on non-constituency issues at most “once every three months” but never spoke about oil procurement or tenders, he said yesterday.

He described this as “infrequent” and said meetings ranged from discussions about transport (Mr Farrugia used to form part of John’s Garage which had various issues that concerned the transport authorities) and oil storage.

“I also met with agents of his competitors,” Dr Gatt said, pointing out that he could not keep his door permanently closed. The important thing was that he never said anything improper at such meetings.

Mr Farrugia is one of the protagonists of the Enemalta oil procurement scandal and has been offered a Presidential pardon to reveal the full extent of the alleged corruption.

“I categorically deny ever discussing tenders with anyone. This was a strict rule in here,” he said, adding that he had a track record of taking action at the slightest suspicion that information was being given to bidders by officials. He added that he “never made a cent” illicitly.

The Infrastructure Minister was addressing a two-hour press conference at his ministry where he invited journalists to ask as many questions as they liked about the oil scandal. This was the first time Dr Gatt held a news conference since allegations regarding commissions being made on Enemalta oil procurement surfaced last month, apart from short comments he gave after being questioned by the police.

Dr Gatt began by praising the original story that appeared on Malta Today revealing the oil scandal as “serious journalism” but said the matter had since degenerated, with Labour media making “malicious” implications in his regard.

“I cannot let these insinuations go by without a reply,” he said, adding that he had been holding back so as not to hinder police investigations.

Dr Gatt also said he suspected he was being “framed” by the Labour Party seeing as there were serious inconsistencies between the latest e-mails published by The Times and those published by Malta Today.

The Times pointed out that the e-mail published was not an original but had been retyped because the quality of the original e-mail found on Facebook was not appropriate for publication. This had been explained in the caption on the newspaper. Dr Gatt accepted this version of events but said there were still inconsistencies that went beyond the retyping, such as the fact that the date on the latest e-mail published, and those on the e-mails published in The Sunday Times, were in different languages.

He argued that if one’s computer is set on the English language, all e-mails would be in that language. Moreover, if the correspondence came from two different computers, it was still strange that a person who wrote his e-mails in English would set his computer to Maltese.

On this basis, he insisted that he would ask the Police Commissioner to investigate his claims.

Dr Gatt acknowledged that the e-mails making reference to meetings with “AG” and “Aust” were in all likelihood referring to him, but said this did not mean he had discussed oil procurement tenders at these meetings.

Dr Gatt said he did not feel he should resign on this case because he did nothing illegal or unethical and had carried out the necessary “oversight” to prevent such illicit behaviour.

He had chosen a chairman for Enemalta who was a successful businessman, a respected head of the Chamber of Commerce, and someone who had been chairman of the Water Services Corporation.

Dr Gatt pointed out that there were less than three weeks to go for the election, so it would be easy to resign, but he was worried about the precedent this would create. The matter, he said, was “debatable”.

“When (Labour MP) Gavin Gulia was minister he appointed Ray Pace as a judge and Patrick Vella as a magistrate. Should he have left politics when they were charged with corruption?”

Saying he was “very serene” that right would prevail, he urged the Labour media to give any evidence of wrongdoing to the police.

Asked whether he was right to attend the meeting where Mr Farrugia’s presidential pardon was discussed, Dr Gatt said he would have excluded himself had the Prime Minister or Attorney General said they had a problem with his presence. They did not.

Asked whether he had a Swiss bank account, Dr Gatt admitted that this was the case but later said it was opened in 1973 by his father, inherited by his mother and more recently inherited by himself. He said he was under the impression that this had been declared as part of his assets but on a TV programme later he admitted that he had forgotten to do so.

Dr Gatt also denied that he ever had an inkling about oil commissions before the story emerged in Malta Today. The only people who knew about this were the Farrugia brothers who carried out an IT audit into Mr Farrugia, he said.

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