Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt said today that Israeli company Bateman, one of the bidders for the power station extension contract, had both threatened and offered incentives to the government in order to win the contract.
Its officials, he said, had also admitted that they had Enemalta insider information .
Speaking at a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee during which he asked a series of questions to the Auditor General, Dr Gatt said that documents presented to the Auditor showed that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi even refused to take a phone call from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who wanted to promote the Israeli bid.
Dr Gatt said that while Bateman had accused BWSC of unlawful political assistance and insider information, he knew that evidence given before the National Audit office showed that it was actually Bateman which had resorted to such tactics.
Documents given to the Auditor by Edgar Galea Curmi, an official at the Office of the Prime Minister, showed that at a meeting between the Prime Minister and the Israeli Ambassador, the latter warned Dr Gonzi that "the issue is going to embarrass the Maltese government as the Malta Labour Party has good contacts with the Hutney Bateman consortium and has all thed etails of the tender."
The ambassador also claimed that at meeting with Joseph Muscat, the issue had been raised at the request of Dr Muscat.
Dr Gatt said the words used by the Israeli ambassador to the prime minister showed clearly that Bateman had used this diplomat to send a message to Dr Gonzi.
Dr Gatt said said that later, former Israeli ambassador Ehud Olmert, himself involved in corruption cases, had phoned Dr Gonzi and asked to speak to him about the bid.
Dr Gonzi refused the call, arguing, as he had done with the ambassador, that politicians did not get involved in tendering procedures.
Dr Gatt said the representative of Bateman then had a meeting in Brussels with Richard Cachia Caruana, Malta's representative to the EU where he presented him a 'political brief'. He also contacted MEPs Simon Busuttil and David Casa.
Documents given to the auditor by Mr Cachia Caruana showed that at his meeting in Brussels, the Bateman representative, Mr Siesler, warned that the company would resort to the press. He told Mr Cachia Caruana that a director of Bateman was a former minister and bank director who had close contacts with the then Israeli finance minister and could therefore facilitate a double taxation avoidance agreement with Malta.
This carrot, Dr Gatt said, had been offered after many Israeli refusals to Maltese requests for such an agreement.
This, Dr Gatts said, was yet another example of undue political interference.
In his documents to the auditor, Mr Cachia Caruana had also reported that Mr Siesler also claimed to having access to internal Enemalta correspondence, Dr Gatt said.
This admission of insider information was further reinforced when the Bateman lawyer wrote to the prime minister, just 10 days after the bids closed, where he indicated that he already knew of a report which included the company among the shortlisted bidders.
Dr Gatt complained that while the Auditor-General's report said that it found no evidence of any BWSC involvement in insider information or undue political interference, the report did not make clear how this existed in the case of Bateman.
Labour MP Evarist Bartolo said if the pressure made by Bateman was as described by Dr Gatt - and he had no reason to doubt him - then he wanted to condemn it.
Such behaviour, he said was unacceptable and the PL condemned any such political interference and threats.
If the ambassador said that there were good contacts between Bateman and the PL, this was a blatant lie. It was also not true that there were phone calls between Labour MPs and people in Israel.