Bank of Valletta will not divulge the names of lawyers it engages, nor would it say whether some sort of competitive procedure is in place.
Members of the legal profession have complained to Times of Malta that the BOV was giving legal work to certain lawyers having close connections with the Labour Party and excluding others.
We cannot understand why BOV does not follow the right transparent procedure
They said this also happened under the Nationalist administration with lawyers connected to the PN benefiting.
“We cannot understand why BOV does not follow the right transparent procedure and offers the opportunity for such work to all those eligible,” an irritated senior lawyer told this newspaper.
“Under the Nationalists, lawyers with close connections to the party or even related to Cabinet members were given this work.
“Now, under Labour, the same is happening,” a woman lawyer complained.
Unlike HSBC, which performs all related legal vetting of loan contracts in-house, it has been the policy of BOV to subcontract individual private lawyers to do this work.
The choice is made directly by the bank management without any call for applications and the lawyers are paid a fee according to each contract they vet.
BOV makes hundreds of loan contracts a year.
BOV sources said new ‘recruits’ included Labour members of Parliament and their siblings.
Some lawyers associated with the previous administration were also kept on the bank’s books although their work was reduced once the bank’s pool of lawyer’s increased.
“I am irritated at the system used by the bank to choose these lawyers and not at the individuals being given this work,” a 25-year- old lawyer said.
Times of Malta asked the bank for a list of the lawyers performing such work between 2012 and to date. However, the bank refused to give this information citing reasons of a “commercial nature”.
Asked whether the bank had any policy on the selection of external lawyers, the bank would not comment.
The government has the biggest shareholding in BOV, a public limited company listed on the stock exchange. It appoints the bank’s chairman.