Contractors Jeffrey and Peter Montebello are expected to be arraigned in the coming days in connection with the bribery of Finance Minister Tonio Fenech’s former private secretary.

Noel Borg Hedley, 67, of Gżira, admitted in court last month that he received money from the Montebello brothers to waive fees they owed on the sale of under-declared properties.

The police said the brothers were being investigated and sources say they should be arraigned shortly.

Mr Borg Hedley, who served with Mr Fenech when he was still Parliamentary Secretary in the Finance Ministry, was conditionally discharged for three years and given a perpetual interdiction.

Mr Borg Hedley admitted to receiving bribes in 2008 from the contractors to reduce or waive fees owed to government departments falling under the jurisdiction of the Finance Ministry.

Mr Fenech has categorically denied any knowledge of or connection with the case. However, the case has still proved thorny for the Finance Minister not least because the contractors are the same ones he had hired to carry out renovation works on his house in Balzan. The job had ended in controversy after a subcontractor, Charles Magro, of Rainbow Projects Ltd, alleged that JPM Brothers had told him they were doing the renovation on Mr Fenech’s residence as “a favour” in return for the minister’s alleged help to enable JPM Brothers sell the Jerma Palace Hotel, an allegation Mr Fenech also forcefully denies.

The Montebello brothers were at the top of a stellar rise a few years back when they landed, in the space of a few years, a succession of large projects, from A3 towers near the Addolorata Cemetery in Paola, to the Belmonte Heights apartment block in Sliema and the Xemxija Heights project.

The Xemxija project ran into serious financial difficulty and remains on the drawing board, half of the Belmonte Heights property in Sliema was sold off after it remained undeveloped for years and the towers in Paola remain uninhabited years after being built.