The Labour Party has called on the government to publish the correspondence received from the European Commission, which is looking into whether tendering rules were broken in the Delimara power station extension contract.
The Sunday Times reported that in June the Commission had sent a series of questions to the government following suspicion that community procurement procedures had been broken in the award of the contract to Danish company BWSC.
“The government should publish the correspondence it received from the EU Commission on the power station extension contract and the reply it intends to give,” Labour EU affairs spokesman Luciano Busuttil said.
He expressed concern that the government had hid the fact that the Commission had taken the first step in a procedure that could result in legal proceedings against Malta.
Dr Busuttil said this was the second time in a few months that the Commission had written to the government on a serious case, the other being the withholding of funds for educational programmes. Both cases showed a serious lack of transparency by the government.
The government has until Wednesday to answer a set of queries raised by Brussels over the controversial contract awarded to BWSC.
A letter of formal notice – the first of a three-pronged EU legal procedure – was sent to the government by the Commission claiming Malta broke EU procurement rules when awarding the controversial €200 million tender.
According to EU sources, the Commission commenced legal action over the issue on its own initiative.
“The Commission has concerns that Malta might have infringed EU public procurement law in the tender procedure carried out by Enemalta... Malta has been requested to submit its observations on the Enemalta tender procedure within two months (of) the letter of formal notice,” a Commission spokes-man was quoted as saying by The Sunday Times.
The tender was mired in controversy and although an investigation by the Auditor General concluded there was no hard evidence of corruption, he also pointed out that some people did not cooperate with the investigation.
Apart from this the Auditor found various discrepancies between the conditions Enemalta had included at tendering stage and the conditions that featured in the contract signed with BWSC on May 26, 2009.
However, a big concern was Enemalta’s decision to allow BWSC to continue with its bidding process despite having proposed prototype technology, which was contrary to what the tender document had asked for.
BWSC was retained in the running after a technical evaluation of bids undertaken by Enemalta-appointed consultants Lahmeyer International.
Lahmeyer’s interest in the bidding process was particularly significant since the Maltese agent for BWSC, Joseph Mizzi, used to work with them until December 2007.