[attach id=251127 size="medium"]Tancred Tabone, former chairman of MOBC.[/attach]
Commissions on oil purchases were not paid by the successful bidders to their Maltese representatives but by the State-owned company MOBC, a court heard yesterday.
The former general manager of State-owned company MOBC, Hugh Attard Montalto, testified yesterday that invoices for the commissions were sent to the former CEO of MOBC, Frank Sammut, who would then pass them on to the accounts department.
Mr Attard Montalto was testifying in the case against the former chairman of MOBC, Tancred Tabone, who stands charged with fraud, bribery and money laundering.
Mr Sammut is facing similar charges in separate proceedings.
Mr Attard Montalto said that commissions were only paid when Total or Elf Trading Limited were involved. No commissions were paid if oil procurement contracts were won by other companies.
Total and Elf Trading had won 18 contracts and it was always Mr Sammut who would decide to whom the contracts should be awarded, Mr Attard Montalto testified.
He said he was Mr Sammut’s personal assistant and, although he did see the invoices, he would not question them and knew nothing else about them.
The invoices were sent by Powerplan Limited, which later became known as MO Limited, he said. The company was owned by George Farrugia, the man who has been granted a presidential pardon to reveal the intricate web of the scandal.
Questioned about the chartering of oil barges by MOBC, Mr Attard Montalto said it had been Mr Sammut who had recommended to the board to choose a barge. It later turned out that, unbeknown to the directors, Mr Sammut had part owned the barge through another company.
He said that when the company had issued a call for offers and received 13 bids, Mr Sammut evaluated each one and then recommended that the same barge he co-owned should be chartered. After evaluating the 13 bids, Mr Sammut recommended that the barge named Oarsman, the one partly owned by Mr Sammut, be chosen. The witness said the board voted unanimously to charter the barge.
Under cross examination, Mr Attard Montalto said Mr Tabone was a part time chairman.
Defence lawyer Giannella de Marco informed the court that she had filed two applications, one of them dealing with Mr Tabone’s participation in the board meetings of another oil company, Island Bunker Oils Limited.
She noted that the company’s board included two other men: Anthony Cassar, chairman of Cassar Ship Repair, and Francis Portelli, of Virtu Ferries, who stand charged in a separate case of bribing Mr Tabone.
The problem was that, by law, Mr Tabone could not talk to witnesses in the case against him. However, though Mr Cassar and Mr Portelli were co-accused, they were not technically witnesses at this point in time, so there should not be a problem if her client spoke to them and avoided speaking about the case, she said.
Dr de Marco pointed out that Mr Tabone had no interest in speaking to them about the case.
At this point, Mr Tabone told Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit that he needed to be present because he risked losing everything by not attending board meetings. Important decisions were being made without him.
The magistrate asked him to file submissions on the matter.
In the second application, he asked to be allowed to travel abroad and was granted permission against a deposit of €7,000.