Outgoing Ambassador to the EU Richard Cachia Caruana was trying to deflect attention from the Nationalist Party’s internal problems by citing events at Air Malta 15 years ago, Labour MP Karmenu Vella said yesterday.
Moreover, he was shifting the blame for bad decisions taken by the airline’s management when he was a director to other directors on the board, the MP charged.
Mr Vella has been summoned by Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando to testify on accusations against Mr Cachia Caruana, one of them being that he colluded with members of the Labour Administration. The Nationalist backbencher wants Mr Cachia Caruana expelled from the party weeks after the MP backed a Labour motion which led to the Ambassador’s resignation.
“It is clear that Mr Cachia Caruana is shifting the blame for the decision taken by the Air Malta board to buy the RJ70 aircraft,” the Labour MP said.
In a statement on Wednesday, the outgoing EU representative questioned Mr Vella’s failure to publish the outcome of an inquiry into why members of Air Malta management omitted crucial trip cost guarantees in the contract for the purchase of four Avro RJ70 aircraft in the mid-1990s.
Mr Cachia Caruana claimed the inquiry was called after faults developed in the new aircraft but the airline could do nothing about it as the guarantee clause had been deleted from the contract it had signed.
Mr Vella replied yesterday that he had no time to publish it as he was only minister for a short term.
“He (Mr Cachia Caruana) had 14 years to publish this and other reports had he wanted to,” he told reporters yesterday.
“I felt Mr Cachia Caruana had tried to use me to attack his colleagues. I was not ready to play his game and I felt I had to stop the discussion there.”
Mr Vella filed an affidavit yesterday morning confirming his version of events as outlined in a statement he issued a day earlier.
He noted that Mr Cachia Caruana did not deny that mistaken decisions had been taken by Air Malta, but was only trying to distance himself from them, even though he was a member of the board, and the board was unanimous in its decisions.