The international oil company embroiled in the Enemalta procurement scandal has declined to comment on an e-mail between the rogue trader at the heart of the allegations and one of its officials.
A spokesman for Trafigura said “we have no comment to make” in a brief telephone call responding to a series of e-mails sent by The Times.
The Sunday Times published an e-mail dated January 2005 by Camille Kay, then responsible for Trafigura’s European fuel oil trade, in which she asked George Farrugia: “How did your meeting with the minister go? Any good feedback?”
Mr Farrugia, at one point an agent for both Trafigura and Total, has been granted a Presidential Pardon to give State evidence into kickbacks in connection with oil procurement at Enemalta.
This newspaper asked Trafigura for a comment on the e-mail and also whether the context of the meeting could be explained.
The e-mail formed part of a set of four such messages, two of them from George Farrugia to former Enemalta Chairman Tancred Tabone – who is also under investigation in relation to the case – one to Ms Kay and a fourth message to Olivier de Richemont, from Total’s subsidiary Totsa.
Attempts to obtain a comment from Total have so far been unsuccessful. There was no response from Mathieu Rouquie, the alleged recipient of a fifth e-mail that was published in Malta Today, social media and The Times.
Repeated attempts to contact him proved futile, in spite of a message from his office manager who said she would forward the message.
Yesterday afternoon, Mr Rouquie sent a text message from his mobile phone, asking: “What is it about?” However, at the time of writing, there was no reply.
In an e-mail allegedly sent to Mr Rouquie, Mr Farrugia states: “In the meantime I have had meetings with top officials and the minister himself and felt that it is still too early (a part of the e-mail message is missing).”
The authenticity of the e-mail involving Mr Rouquie has been called into question, primarily by Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt, who at the time was responsible for Enemalta, and who pointed out inconsistencies in the e-mails published in a press conference on Thursday.
Dr Gatt said there were significant differences between the version published by The Times and Malta Today.
The Times pointed out that the version it published was not an original but had been retyped because of the quality of the original on Facebook was not adequate for publication.
The e-mail image reproduced by Malta Today and the one on Facebook (on which The Times’ replica was based) are identical.
The original version reproduced by The Times was found on the Facebook pages of several people who were tagged into a post which originally appeared on a Labour Party Facebook page. The actual image was lifted off the page of MP Evarist Bartolo.
During his press conference, Dr Gatt also said the date on the latest e-mail published was in Maltese while the date on the four e-mails published on Sunday by timesofmalta.com and The Sunday Times, was in English. He said he suspected there could be “a frame-up” by Labour, adding that he would file a report with the police.
“There could have been two computers (from which the e-mails were sent) but if that’s the case, would one be set in Maltese and one in English?
“It is not very normal...” for someone to write in English and set his computer on the Maltese language, Dr Gatt said.
mmicallef@timesofmalta.com