When former Enemalta CEO Karl Camilleri’s term was up in 2011 he called George Farrugia, the man at the centre of the oil procurement scandal, in search of business management consultancy jobs.
Mr Camilleri admitted he tried to build up a clientele and called several contacts, including Mr Farrugia, the local representative of oil giants Totsa and Trafigura. Mr Camilleri met Mr Farrugia to see whether the latter could introduce Mr Camilleri to new clients.
He was fielding questions by members of the Public Accounts Committee that is discussing the conclusions of an audit of Enemalta’s fuel procurement procedures by the Auditor General.
Enemalta is not the cables and the power station,it’s the 1,400 people who work there every day
The Auditor flagged serious shortcomings between 2008 and 2011. Mr Camilleri served as CEO between November 2008 and November 2011.
Several questions put to Mr Camilleri were about Mr Farrugia, who was granted a presidential pardon to spill the beans on the oil procurement scandal. Mr Farrugia was also a former CEO of John’s Garage.
Mr Camilleri said that when he served as CEO he was sometimes asked to attend “cordial meetings” with Mr Farrugia in the presence of Enemalta’s chairman and chief financial officer.
During such meetings, held with several suppliers, Mr Farrugia was told to ensure the quality of supply and to abide by time windows and credit terms.
He also met Mr Farrugia during fuel summits and had meetings with him on technical matters like the provision of second-hand spare parts for the petroleum division.
On at least two occasions he had a “cordial” dinner with Mr Farrugia together with Enemalta’s CFO and chairman. He could not remember who the chairman was.
Asked whether he ever received Christmas hampers from Mr Farrugia or John’s Garage, he said he had received “four bottles of wine” from Mr Farrugia.
Mr Camilleri said that when he became CEO, earning an annual salary of €82,000, there was no handover from his predecessor, David Spiteri Gingell.
Mr Spiteri Gingell told the PAC earlier this week he resigned because of clashes with the Finance Minister.
Mr Camilleri said he found an empty office. The accounts’ department was working on skeleton staff but Enemalta was in the process of increasing the number of chief officers from three to six.
When he joined the fuel procurement committee, tenders were issued via e-mails sent to about 300 addresses, as far as he could recall.
On January 19, 2011, CFO Antoine Galea called an urgent meeting the day after the fuel procurement committee had met. This was an extraordinary event.
Mr Galea said Totsa had phoned him to ask why they had not received any phone calls about negotiations. It resulted that the committee had not received Totsa’s bid.
This incident led to the introduction of an e-mail password provided by the Malta Information Technology Agency.
Mr Camilleri added that when he served as CEO no minutes of meetings were taken, something he was not happy about. In his tenure, several changes were made to the committee, including the introduction of an adjudication sheet.
He said there was “absolutely” no interference from the ministry concerned in terms of fuel procurement.
When his term was up in 2011 he was exhausted and decided it was time to leave. He asked for permission to keep his laptop for record purposes and it was granted.
He also took personal copies of documents which he returned when asked for them. Confidentiality was never breached, he insisted.
At the end of his testimony, he said he wanted to add a few words: “Enemalta is not the cables and the power station, it’s the 1,400 people who work there every day – 99.999 per cent of the time they get it right… There, I saw a lot of integrity.”