Enemalta’s fuel buying committee stopped taking minutes in April 2004 when its members included three former officials who face bribery charges.
Pippo Pandolfino, a former chief financial officer at Enemalta who sat for the first time on the fuel procurement committee in April 2004, yesterday said no minutes of the previous meeting used to be read out.
Mr Pandolfino was testifying in front of the Public Accounts Committee that is probing the findings of the Auditor General’s audit of how Enemalta bought oil between 2008 and 2011.
When asked whether he ever queried why no minutes were taken, Mr Pandolfino said he never felt the need to do so. He said that in his first meeting he had only been employed with Enemalta for a month and the other committee members were veterans – Tancred Tabone, then chairman, Frank Sammut, the chairman’s oil consultant, and petroleum division manager Alfred Mallia.
Mr Tabone, Mr Sammut and Mr Mallia stand charged with corruption and bribery on oil tenders awarded by Enemalta.
Mr Pandolfino added that, with hindsight, it would have provided a better paper trail if formal minutes were taken.
He told me to put my notes in the envelope just in case they were needed in the future- Ranier Fsadni
Employed with Enemalta in March 2004, Mr Pandolfino left the corporation five years later to join Island Bunker Oils, a company that was part-owned by Mr Tabone. Three of the company’s directors were earlier this year charged with bribery of Enemalta officials.
Mr Pandolfino said the last time formal minutes were taken was in a meeting on December 18, 2003. The December meeting was the first time Enemalta started evaluating oil bids. Previously, Enemalta bought oil at preferential rates through bilateral agreements with Libya and Eni, the Italian energy company.
“In my first meeting, the chairman said he would read the bids and asked me to take notes and tell him which was the most favourable. At the end of the meeting the chairman told me to put my notes in the envelope just in case they were needed in the future,” he said.
His statement prompted PAC chairman Jason Azzopardi to remark that the chairman must have been a prophet. “He was a prophet,” Mr Pandolfino replied with a smile.
Mr Pandolfino’s hand-written minutes included elaborate doodles, which the Auditor General found attached with the sealed documents pertaining to the fuel procurement committee.
Mr Pandolfino insisted the ruled paper with his hand writing on it contained personal notes and were never intended to be minutes. He said he had a habit of doodling on papers. At the start of his testimony Mr Pandolfino said he would be “prudent” not to cause “pain” in view of the court cases against people he worked with and knew.
But Dr Azzopardi cut him short, reminding him that he was obliged to say the truth “irrespective of pain because this is not a hospital”.
Mr Pandolfino said it was a “big injustice” that his five years of work at Enemalta were reduced to a single paper with doodles.
Exhibiting two large files containing minutes and documents going back to his time at Enemalta, Mr Pandolfino was asked if he was in possession of the “sensitive information”.
“When I left Enemalta I took my computer with then-CEO Karl Camilleri’s permission. It is sensitive information belonging to Enemalta, which is in my possession with the CEO’s permission. I did not steal the data from Enemalta and if I should not have it, ask the CEO,” he said.
Mr Pandolfino disputed the Auditor’s findings that there were at least two instances when the fuel procurement committee awarded oil tenders not to the cheapest bidder. He insisted a deeper analysis of tender requirements including provisions for security stocks would have shown the Auditor reached the wrong conclusion.
The PAC asked National Audit Office manager Keith Mercieca to explain the conclusions. Mr Mercieca said the lack of proper documentation made it very difficult for the NAO to reach its conclusions and so it relied on Enemalta’s explanations.
He said there were instances when the tender was awarded not to the cheapest bidder but it was difficult for the NAO to understand whether this was favourable because there was no documentation to explain the reasoning that led to the committee’s choice.
Mr Pandolfino said that an analysis he carried out on six tenders awarded between February 2008 and January 2009 indicated that the fuel procurement committee had managed to negotiate $1.4 million in savings.
He will continue his testimony on October 2.