A director of the Malta Tourism Authority said in court yesterday he found nothing wrong with a report prepared by the authority's former acting CEO George Micallef on the controversial Mistra disco development.
Mario Attard was testifying before Magistrate Lawrence Quintano in the compilation of evidence against Mr Micallef who is pleading not guilty to making a false declaration on and before last October.
Mr Micallef was charged in connection with the case, which made the headlines before the last election when former Opposition Leader Alfred Sant alleged corruption in the way the permit for the disco was issued on land belonging to Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.
In previous sittings, the court heard how Mr Micallef had first prepared a favourable report for the project as a private consultant to the developer and then produced a report that made a similarly favourable recommendation as the authority's acting CEO.
Mr Attard said he had meetings with Mr Micallef about the Mistra bay development as part of routine discussions on other similar projects. What is known as a compliance certificate, which gives the MTA's preliminary stamp of approval to a project, was issued for the development in 2005. Subsequently, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority asked for a report justifying the MTA's position.
Mepa asked for the report to be submitted urgently and Mr Attard said he consulted with Mr Micallef because the two of them were scheduled to go abroad and he could not draw up the report.
Mr Micallef told him he could do it as he had already worked on the Mistra development. The report was filed on Mr Attard's name and was signed by the director's secretary.
Asked by the prosecuting officer, Police Inspector Angelo Gafà, why his secretary had signed the report on his behalf before submitting it to Mepa while he was abroad, Mr Attard replied that he had given her permission to do so.
When asked whether he knew what the report contained Mr Attard said he did not.
The prosecutor pointed out that it was odd for a report, which the director had nothing to do with and which he had not even seen, to be signed on his behalf by his secretary. Mr Attard said that it was normal procedure for his name to feature on reports he would not have seen in detail. In fact, Mr Attard said he only checked the report once the story had broken in the media this year, adding that the report quoted an internal directorate report that he had not seen and did not exist.
Cross-examined by defence lawyer Joseph Giglio, who asked him whether there was anything unusual about the report submitted by Mr Micallef, Mr Attard replied there was not.
Mr Attard said that after being interrogated by the police on the matter he was mentally exhausted and did not want to read the report because he feared that it contained "something out of this world". However, on reading it he was surprised because everything was in order.
When asked whether he thought that it was ok for the report in question to quote an internal directorate report that did not exist, he replied that "as content it is good but I expect that I would have amended the quote because I had no knowledge of the internal report".
Questioned further by Dr Giglio, Mr Attard said the report written by Mr Micallef in his capacity as a consultant became an internal MTA report after it was endorsed by the authority.