The man whose doodles appeared on hand-written minutes of Enemalta’s fuel procurement committee this evening insisted they were “only notes”.
Pippo Pandolfino, a former chief finance officer between 2004 and 2009, said no minutes were taken during the meetings during which oil tenders were adjudicated.
He is testifying in front of Parliament’s Public Accounts Commitee, which is probing the findings of a National Audit Office audit into the way Enemalta bought oil between 2008 and 2011.
The damning audit criticised the fact that no minutes were taken by the fuel procurement committee and in some instances the minutes amounted to illegible notes with doodles.
Mr Pandolfino admitted the hand-written notes were his and said it was his habit to doodle on papers, especially in lengthy meetings that sometimes lasted four hours.
He said the first meeting of the fuel procurement committee he attended in April 2004 – a month after his employment – no minutes from the previous December meeting were read out.
When asked whether he ever queried why no minutes were taken, Mr Pandolfino said he never felt the need to do so. He explained that in his first meeting he had only been employed for a month and the other committee members were veterans – Tancred Tabone, then chairman, Frank Sammut, the chairman’s oil consultant and petroleum division manager Alfred Mallia.
Mr Tabone, Mr Sammut and Mr Mallia stand charged with corruption and bribery on oil tenders awarded by Enemalta.
Mr Pandolfino added that with hindsight it would have provided a better paper trail if formal minutes were taken.
He said the last time formal minutes were taken was on December 18, 2003, which was the first time that Enemalta started evaluating oil bids. Before December 2003 Enemalta bought oil at preferential rates through bilateral agreements with Libya and Eni, the Italian energy company.
“In my first meeting the chairman said he would read the bids and asked me to take notes and tell him which was the most favourable... at the end of the meeting the chairman told me to put my notes in the envelope just in case they were needed in the future,” Mr Pandolfino said.
His statement prompted PAC chairman Jason Azzopardi to remark that the chairman must have been a prophet.
“He was a prophet,” Mr Pandolfino replied with a smile.
His testimony started on the wrong footing when Mr Pandolfino said he would be “prudent” not to cause “pain” in view of the court cases instituted at the start of the year against people that he worked with and knew.
But Dr Azzopardi cut him short, reminding him that he was obliged to say the truth. “Irrespective of pain, because this is not a hospital, you are bound to say the truth. It is not a question of being prudent. The consequences of not saying the truth here are the same as not saying the truth in court.”
Mr Pandolfino said it was a “big injustice” that his five years of work at Enemalta were reduced to a single paper with doodles. “This hurt me a lot.”
Exhibiting two large files containing minutes and documents going back to his time at Enemalta, Mr Pandolfino had to answer how he was in possession of the “sensitive information”.
“When I left Enemalta I took my computer with permission from then CEO Karl Camilleri. It is sensitive information belonging to Enemalta, which is in my possession with the CEOs permission. I did not steal the data from Enemalta, if I should not have done so, ask the CEO,” he answered to persistent questioning from Government MPs on the documents.
It was then pointed out to him by Dr Azzopardi that he was legally obliged to submit the documentation to the PAC, “whether he liked it or not”.
Mr Pandolfino noted that during the fuel procurement meetings the chairman used to invite observers that included other chief officers at Enemalta. However, he could not remember whether Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi, at the time chief information officer, had ever been invited to attend a fuel procurement meeting.
Mr Pandolfino disputed the NAO’s findings that there were at least two instances when the fuel procurement committee awarded oil tenders not to the cheapest bidder. He insisted a deeper analysis of international oil prices would have shown the NAO reached the wrong conclusion.
He insisted it was his obligation to clarify the issue because it cast a bad light on how fuel was bought when he formed part of the committee.
The PAC then called NAO officer Keith Mercieca to explain the conclusions.
Mr Mercieca said the lack of proper documentation made it very difficult for the NAO to reach its own conclusions and it relied on Enemalta’s explanations.
He confirmed there were instances when the tender was awarded not to the cheapest bidder but it was difficult for the NAO to understand whether this was favourable because there was no documentation to understand the reasoning that led to the committee’s choice.
Mr Pandolfino then waved a paper showing an internal Enemalta email in his possession with details of the bid referred to by the NAO that he said supported his claim – he insisted that when security stocks were taken into consideration the tender was awarded to the cheapest bidder.
Mr Mercieca said the NAO had seen the email submitted by Mr Pandolfino but there were no minutes that explained the reasoning behind the choices made.
“Lack of documentation makes it difficult to reach hard and fast conclusions. Testimony relaying on memory six years later has to be taken with a pinch of salt,” Mr Mercieca said.
But Mr Pandolfino objected to the statement, adding that he could arrive at the right conclusion with the documentation in hand. He then asked the PAC to speak to his successor, current CFO Antoine Galea, who would have had access to all the documentation.
Mr Pandolfino said that from an analysis he carried out on six tenders awarded between February 2008 and January 2009 the fuel procurement committee had managed to negotiate $1.4 million in savings. He said the accumulated difference between the awarded tenders and the second best placed amounted to more than $7 million.
Mr Pandolfino will continue his testimony on October 2 at 6.30pm.