Former Enemalta chairman Alex Tranter is to face charges of misappropriation connected with his tenure at the helm of the energy corporation, The Sunday Times of Malta can reveal.
Charges were filed this week, a source at the law courts confirmed, and the former chairman is expected to be arraigned in the coming weeks.
Mr Tranter, who served as chairman of the corporation between 2005 and 2010, was placed under investigation in May of this year after an audit flagged certain expenses made during his tenure.
Contacted for a comment, Mr Tranter said he had not yet been notified of the charges.
“I have no comment to make because this is the first time I am hearing about it,” he said.
It sometimes takes days for a defendant to be notified of the charges under the system used in court.
The charges are filed by the prosecution and the name of the accused is placed in a bag before being fished out and paired to a particular magistrate.
Then the magistrate’s agenda is consulted and a date for the first hearing is set.
It is understood that the charges are related to misappropriation connected to expenses made on Enemalta’s credit card but they have nothing to do with the oil procurement scandal, which has seen former Enemalta officials and rogue oil trader George Farrugia charged over alleged kickbacks paid on fuel contracts.
Charges relating to credit card use
In 2010, former finance minister Tonio Fenech had said that in his five years as chairman Mr Tranter had spent more than €110,000 (€73,693 on travel expenses and €49,439 on hospitality and accommodation) using the company’s credit card.
Mr Tranter was also chairman of Enemalta during the controversial decision to choose Danish firm BWSC for the extension to the Delimara power station.
He did not attend board meetings discussing the tender in question because he was a director in a separate venture owned by Zaren Vassallo of Vassallo Builders Group – the Danish firm’s local agent.
However, he was dogged by accusations of conflict of interest.
He was back in the limelight last year when the Auditor General released a damning report
Shortly after stepping down in 2010, he took a position with American solar energy giant Sun Power, which in turn expressed an interest in a public tender for the installation of solar panels on government buildings, together with the Vassallo Group.
He was back in the limelight last year when the Auditor General released a damning report flagging serious shortcomings in the accountability of the way fuel was bought by Enemalta between 2008 and 2011.
Mr Tranter had defended himself saying that he inherited a system through which minutes were not kept at meetings of the Fuel Procurement Committee that decided on oil contracts.
However, he insisted that the decisions were traceable and said that the picture would have been clear to the Auditor General had he been given the chance to give his version of events before the report was published.
The report triggered a police investigation, which is still ongoing.
This is the second time a former chairman of the corporation will be facing criminal charges after Mr Tranter’s predecessor, Tancred Tabone, was charged with corruption and money laundering last year in a spin-off of the oil procurement scandal.
mmicallef@timesofmalta.com