Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt defended a 2005 decision to remove the chairman of a committee tasked with advising on how to buy oil, saying he had breached recruitment procedures when he hired two graduates.

The person involved was Joe Falzon, the then chairman of Enemalta’s Advisory Board, which dealt with policy making rather than oil procurement itself.

According to the Minister, Prof. Falzon had engaged two graduates to assist the board but had not gone through the government’s recruitment procedures stipulated at law and which also bind Enemalta.

“Consequently, the recruitment was illegal,” Dr Gatt said. “It was a difficult position, we had to part ways amicably.”

Eventually, Enemalta initiated the correct procedure – which includes authority from the Finance Ministry – and one graduate was eventually employed, the Ministry said.

The statement came in response to claims by Labour MP Evarist Bartolo this week that Dr Gatt had removed Prof. Falzon – who he did not name – from chairman of the advisory committee after he had asked for two graduates to carry out research on the oil market and the exchange rate.

He argued that people involved in the committee felt they had been used at the time in light of the revelations that were made recently with regard to oil procurement.

The development, in fact, comes almost a month after Malta Today first broke the story about the alleged kickbacks taken on oil tenders awarded to Trafigura.

Several people have been arrested in connection with the case, including Enemalta’s former chairman Tancred Tabone, his former adviser and CEO of the state-owned Mediterranean Oil Bunkering Company (MOBC), Frank Sammut, as well as Trafigura’s agent in Malta, George Farrugia, who has been granted a presidential pardon to give evidence in the case.