The Finance Ministry said today that the government would propose legislation so that any persons convicted of breaking the law would not be awarded government contracts. The same law would also apply to companies whose director or directors would have similarly broken the law.

The ministry explained that to date the laws did not provide for such blacklisting, and interdiction in terms of the Criminal Code only meant that such people could not hold public office.

With reference to paint supplies company S&R Handaq, whose case was raised in a speech on Saturday by Labour leader Joseph Muscat, the ministry said that it was not the company that had been convicted of VAT fraud, but one of its directors. The court had not disqualified the company from bidding for government contracts.

There had therefore been nothing to stop the company from submitting a bid for a government contract. However, the new legislation would not allow this any longer since both the directors and the company would be blacklisted.

LABOUR REACTION

In a statement, the Labour Party said the government was only acting now, after Joseph Muscat had raised the issue during his May Day Speech on Saturday. Indeed, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech had shown he did not know what was happening in his own ministry when he was questioned about the case in Parliament last Wednesday.

The government, through its statement, had confirmed that although a director of S&R Handaq had been convicted of VAT fraud, his company had still been awarded a government contract of almost €50,000.