The Opposition will be putting all the necessary pressure for all the truth to come out about another Marco Gaffarena scandal, uncovered by The Sunday Times of Malta today, Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil said.

The newspaper said this morning that Mr Gaffarena was in negotiations with the owners of the imposing Palazzo Verdelin in Valletta last March to buy their property for €3.5 million to sell it to the government at a profit.

Negotiations were halted following revelations by this newspaper last May over deals involving another building in Old Mint Street where his ownership was eventually expropriated by the government as a profit for Mr Gaffarena.

Dr Busuttil said that Palazzo Verdelin was used as a police station and Mr Gaffarena offered €3.5 million to buy two thirds of the building.

Could anyone imagine wanting to buy a building used as a police station if not because he was already promised a sale, Dr Busuttil asked.

“Who is Mr Gaffarena bribing? To whom is money being passed?”

All facts, Dr Busuttil said, pointed at one direction - corruption.

“We will not let this scandal pass… We will make all the necessary pressure for the truth to come out,” he said adding that it was the people who were paying for corruption.

Dr Busuttil, who was speaking in a telephone interview on Radio 101 on his way from China to Malta, also spoke on relations with China saying the country wanted to strengthen relations with Malta and was willing to do this even with Nationalist Party, which it saw as an alternative government.

Relations between the two countries faced some difficulties in the past two years because of the way the present government did politics.

One example, he said, was the appointment of Sai Mizzi Liang as Malta’s trade envoy to China. This decision was wrong for many reasons including that in a serious country, a government did not appoint a minister’s wife to such a position, which she was not up to and for which she was being paid exaggeratedly.

The appointment, he said, had created unnecessary complications in Malta’s relationship with China it could have done without.

Another problem was the lack of transparency in the way the government did things.

He said while the government had sold a third of Enemalta shares to Shanghai Electric, it had not yet published the contract.

In its one hour meeting with Shanghai Electric, the Opposition delegation managed to learn more than it did from its own government in two years, Dr Busuttil said.

He added that the company made it clear that the principle of transparency was fundamental to the company. So would the government be publishing the contract?

The PN, Dr Busuttil said, wanted genuine cooperation with China built on honesty and transparency.

Unfortunately, there was no such transparency from the Maltese government.