Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said he is not aware of any donations handed down to the Labour Party by Café Premier owners, but the party’s books are being looked into to establish the facts.
“As far as I know, Labour has not received any donations from Mario Camilleri [the Café Premier co-owner] or any of his companies after the election,” Dr Muscat said.
We have carried political responsibility
“However, we are now going through our books and going back to before the election to see whether we have received any donations.”
Asked who should carry political responsibility for the Café Premier deal, which was slammed by the National Audit Office, Dr Muscat at first avoided answering.
Pressed on the issue, seeing he had personally got involved in the deal, Dr Muscat said the government had already shouldered responsibility.
“We have carried political responsibility as we have given full disclosure to the audit office to investigate,” Dr Muscat said.
On Sunday, Dr Muscat admitted mistakes on the controversial deal, pinning the blame on his government’s haste to “solve inherited problems”.
In a damning report issued on the out-of-court deal reached between the Labour government and the Café Premier owners, the NAO slammed the government’s actions to pay €4.2 million to buy back the Valletta complex.
The NAO also revealed the payment of €210,000 in commission through government funds to a company controlled by Mr Camilleri.
The NAO said this commission should have never featured in the agreement.
We are going through our books... to see whether we have received any donations
The report shows Dr Muscat got involved personally in the negotiations through a meeting he held with Mr Camilleri just a month after Labour was swept into power in March 2013.
Dr Muscat admitted he had already met Mr Camilleri before the election but denied he had discussed the Café Premier issue.
Asked how many times he had met Mr Camilleri before the election, Dr Muscat said he had met him twice.
However, he reiterated that he never discussed the Café Premier issue during these meetings. Instead, he said he had discussed Mr Camilleri’s shareholding in Maltco in the context of the previous government’s negotiations on a concession renewal of the lotto and gaming licence.
Though he admitted it was true that the Land Department was not involved in all the steps of the buy-back process, he said it was untrue that it was kept in the dark.
According to the NAO report, the government’s negotiating team “failed to involve the government property department from the initial stages of the negotiations”.
The NAO report also revealed Gmail electronic correspondence between the Prime Minister, his chief of staff and the head of the civil service on the deal in August 2013.
Asked why he used private e-mail for government business, Dr Muscat said he always used the same address to communicate.
Dr Muscat reiterated that the government had learnt its lessons from its mistakes and he had commissioned a new report to seek further clarifications on the NAO report.