The former head of Austin Gatt's ministerial secretariat, Manuel Delia, said the former minister appeared to have known of the oil procurement scandal a few hours, possibly a day before the story broke three years ago.
He told the Public Accounts Committee that Dr Gatt had sent him an SMS saying he had heard word that somebody got rich from oil procurement. He asked him to declare whether he had any knowledge and whether he was involved in any way.
Mr Delia said he had no knowledge, was not involved, and that all his bank accounts were in negative balance.
Mr Delia was replying to questions as the committee resumed its consideration of a report by the Auditor-General on irregularities in oil procurement procedures by Enemalta in 2008.
At the beginning of the sitting, Mr Delia said at the time covered by this investigation he was responsible for the ministry’s communications and was not involved in policy. However at the time and later when he headed the ministry’s secretariat, he never discussed Enemalta’s oil procurement sources with anyone.
Mr Delia said Dr Gatt always made it clear to everyone in his secretariat that they should always avoid involvement in any procurement procedures, which included oil. They had to distance themselves from any whiff of conflict of interest, let alone corruption.
Dr Gatt himself led by example and he refused to meet anyone interested in discussing procurement. Mr Delia said he did not recall ever meeting oil trader George Farrugia and did not personally know him. Nor did he recall any conversations with anyone in Enemalta on where the corporation should buy its oil from.
He never had any opinion on who should supply oil products to Enemalta and never tried to influence anyone or have any interest in the matter.
Justice Minister Owen Bonnici noted that in the audit report, it was shown that Mr Delia was twice copied in with regard to oil hedging agreements. The first e-mail was from Dr Gatt in October 2009. Dr Gatt had told Enemalta chairman Alex Tranter to list the parameters on oil hedging. The second e-mail, a few hours later, was an exchange between the minister and Mr Tranter.
Dr Bonnici asked how Mr Delia had said he was never involved, once he was copied in.
Mr Delia said that as he had explained in his declaration, he was never involved in decision-making on oil procurement and these e-mails did not contradict his declaration.
Mr Delia said he was copied in only because he was head of the secretariat.
Dr Bonnici asked Mr Delia whether he was involved in the privatisation of the gas division of Enemalta.
Mr Delia said that was a process of various stages from the policy considerations, announcement of the decision, applications, processing, and announcement of bidder choice, negotiations and conclusion. The political office was obviously involved in the considerations about whether the section should be privatised, but not who the division should be sold to. He did not participate in the evaluation of bidders in any privatisation process.
Dr Bonnici asked Mr Delia how he could explain Mr Farrugia’s request to meet Claudio Grech (another member of the secretariat at the time) on the LPG privatisation. Was this right in the context of the declaration made earlier about the duties of the members of the secretariat?
Mr Delia said he was not there to judge but to give testimony about what he was personally aware of. He had known nothing about this request until a few days ago. He did not know the stage of the privatisation process when the meeting was requested. Dr Gatt had told the members of his secretariat not to meet anyone about privatisation while bids were being considered. He had no knowledge that this rule was ever broken.
Replying to other questions, Mr Delia said he was involved in Dr Gatt's electoral campaign, mostly handling political literature. He also had some involvement in strategic decisions regarding the 'positioning' of the candidate.
Replying to questions by Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis, Mr Delia said the first time he learnt of the oil procurement scandal was when he read about it. He was never aware of any circumstances revealed at the time.
AUSTIN GATT KNEW OF OIL SCANDAL DAY BEFORE NEWS STORY BROKE
He said Dr Gatt had then asked him whether he had done anything irregular, and he said he had done nothing.
Mr Delia said that as head of secretariat he used to periodically, without particular reason, ask those reporting to him to declare that they had no conflict of interest.
It appeared to him that Dr Gatt had known a day or a few hours before the oil scandal story broke. He had sent him an SMS asking him him to declare whether he was somehow involved. He told him he was not involved and had absolutely no knowledge of the matter. His involvement stopped there.
Mr Delia said the SMS could have been received a day before the story before, or on the day, he was not sure.
He said the members of the Farrugia family had not contacted him after the story broke, nor did he contact with them. He did not know of any contacts.
Nor did he know of any meetings about damage limitation for Dr Gatt. Not did he know of any meetings with the Farrugia family aimed at having them issue a declaration excluding Dr Gatt from the scandal. Had he known, he said, he would have sought to stop any such meeting and let normal procedures take their course.
Asked whether he knew that ministry official Bernard Pace had contacted the Farrugia family, Mr Delia said he did not not.
The committee meets again on November 4.