Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has reneged on a promise he made in Parliament to publish all major contracts by the end of 2016.
Dr Muscat made the promise to Parliament in April when under heavy pressure following the Panama Papers revelations.
He repeated the promise during a mass meeting in May, but backtracked in October, saying that all major contracts would be published “by the end of the legislature”.
The major power station and health contracts signed by the government came under renewed scrutiny last year due to the involvement of Minister Without Portfolio Konrad Mizzi, who was found to have opened a secret company in Panama sheltered by a trust in New Zealand.
During an anti-corruption protest last March, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil called for a police investigation into all contracts negotiated by Dr Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri.
The government has signed multiple energy deals since its election in March 2013, including the €320 million partial sale of Enemalta and the takeover of the BWSC plant by the Chinese State-owned company, Shanghai Electric. The full and complete contracts have been kept under wraps for several years.
The government has also refused to publish multiple contracts signed with Electrogas, the company behind the new power station, including a secret buyout deal signed in July 2015.
Electrogas has been given a €360 million loan guarantee, and the government has promised to buy out the consortium if the European Commission rejects its security of supply agreement.
Freedom of Information requests for all these contracts have been rejected.
Contacted last week, a spokesman for the Prime Minister argued that the government had published all contracts that it had committed to publish by the end of the year. He said that the single exception so far was the “energy contract” which would be published soon.
“May I remind you that the European Commission is still reviewing the relevant energy contracts,” the spokesman said.
The only major contracts published in 2016 were the ones to privatise three hospitals. These, tabled in Parliament in October, were heavily redacted. All key dates and figures governing the deal with Vitals Global Healthcare were removed. Even minor details, such as how often the hospital corridors have to be painted and the facades maintained, were deleted from the published contracts.
jacob.borg@timesofmalta.com