An unsuccessful bidder in the shipyard privatisation had asked former Nationalist Party general secretary Paul Borg Olivier to give him a push, a court heard yesterday.
Details of what was said between Beppe Hili and Dr Borg Olivier at a meeting at the PN headquarters on September 17, 2010, when the bids were still under adjudication, emerged when the latter testified in the case against Mario Mizzi, the former CEO of State investment arm Mimcol, who stands charged with bribery.
In a previous sitting, Paul Cardona, a member of the same consortium, claimed Mr Mizzi had asked him for a bribe in return for favourable treatment in the tender process, which the accused denies.
The case centres on the call for tenders issued as part of the former government’s plan to privatise the shipyard.
Dr Borg Olivier testified that Mr Hili had asked to speak to him and the meeting took place at his office.
He said he was aware that Mr Hili had to be treated cautiously as he had received a number of damning reports about him and Dr Borg Olivier kept notes of what was said, as he usually did.
Mr Hili told him that the privatisation unit had legal problems with his consortium, SYC Ltd, because of its foreign partner.
Mr Hili came to me to solicit my help
Dr Borg Olivier said he told Mr Hili not to worry because the unit’s legal consultant, Anne Fenech, was very trustworthy and would make sure that the process was completely transparent.
He understood that “Mr Hili came to me to solicit my help”, he said.
Sometime after the meeting, the Labour media carried stories about the alleged bribery and had noted that a senior PN official had been informed of it, Dr Borg Olivier testified.
Although no names were mentioned, Dr Borg Olivier’s face was featured in videos accompanying the news reports, implicating him in the allegations.
He said he had spoken to former police commissioner John Rizzo and that Mr Hili never made any allegations of bribery to him.
He would definitely have remembered because whenever such things happened he always went straight to the police. Furthermore, if something so serious had been said he would have recorded it in his notes.
He said that after the allegations surfaced in the media, he asked for a sworn declaration from Nationalist MPs if they had any knowledge of the bribery allegations.
Later in the sitting, Dr Fenech testified that she had been employed as legal consultant to the privatisation unit, noting she was not involved in the adjudication process.
She knew there were five bidding consortiums, which were shortlisted to two.
The preferred bidder was a consortium called SYC Ltd, in which Maltese companies had majority shareholding, and included a foreign partner.
The second bidder selected was Astilleros, from Spain, which had Maltese partners.
Dr Fenech said she had been asked by Mr Rizzo to make a statement about her involvement in the matter and to give all the information she had about the tender process.
SYC Ltd had informed the unit that its foreign partner, Couach, was going into receivership in France as a result of the 2008 economic meltdown.
She was in constant contact with SYC Ltd to remain updated on its situation and also had meetings with French lawyers to “hear from the horse’s mouth” about Couach.
After the legal issues were ironed out and she felt that, “strictly from a legal point of view”, everything was in order, the bid was passed back to the unit for technical evaluation.
At that point, the unit had asked Mimcol to revaluate the bids from a technical aspect and an expert in the sector, Sue Hall, had carried out the evaluation which put Astilleros as the preferred bidder.
Dr Fenech said that SYC Ltd was given 48 percentage points that was below the minimum of 50 required to pass the technical test and she felt that it was not right that for just two percentage points the consortium should not be considered.
She testified that the evaluation was a very subjective issue and when she realised that SYC Ltd had failed the technical test though quoting the highest price and that Astilleros passed the technical test but had the lowest bid, her advice was for the tender to be re-issued.
Asked whether she had ever had an argument with Mr Mizzi, she said that she rarely had legal arguments “because my view is my view and even if Moses came down from above I would not change it”.
Lawyers Joe Giglio and Steve Tonna Lowell appeared for Mr Mizzi.