Education Minister Evarist Bartolo on Tuesday said it had been in the PN’s interest, when in government, never to move forward a Bill to regulate party financing as it did not want to divulge how, and from whom, it was receiving funds.
Mr Bartolo dared the PN to say how the “famous JS list” worked. Through this list, he said, the party was receiving “hundreds of thousands and millions of liri and millions of euros”. He said he had written articles about this list and had spoken both in the House, in the presence of former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi, and outside it. Nobody denied its existence or took any criminal action against him.
He said the “JS list” was a list of all individuals or companies that had won public tenders to provide goods and services to the government. These were then called to the PN headquarters to take “not myrrh, but gold and incense only”.
The queue was quite a long one, and these people, one after another, used to enter the offices of the highest PN officials and pass on envelopes with money to a representative of the party treasurer. Mr Bartolo said this method was employed so that in future, any party official could deny he had ever received any funds from anybody.
These contributions continued year in, year out.
It was through this “JS list” that the party financed itself.
Mr Bartolo specified that the initials “JS” did not refer to the former PN general secretary Joe Saliba but to the late party treasurer Joe Stellini. It was during Mr Stellini’s tenure of office that this scheme was devised – a scheme similar to that employed by the Christian Democrats in Italy which led to corruption, moral decay and the famous tangentopoli or commissions to be paid on public contracts won.
Mr Bartolo said the PN never lifted a finger to shed light on this scheme and it was for this reason that year after year, the European committee against corruption, Greco, always had negative reports on Malta. One could well imagine what dangerous relationships existed between the party in government and local contractors, who passed on part of the public money received to the PN. There was no doubt that when contractors tendered they took these “costs” into consideration.
Mr Bartolo said that if PN officials now denied the existence of this list, he would divulge more information given to him by some of these same contractors. The PN, which always boasted it would eradicate corruption, had institutionalised corruption through this “JS list”. What had happened to all this money, he asked.