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Roads Minister Austin Gatt has asked the police to investigate suspected fraud in the certification of Manwel Dimech Bridge.

The Infrastructure Ministry said the minister had handed the police a report from the chairman of the Roads Department within the ADT which showed communications between the contractor and the engineer who was responsible for the certification. The communications showed that the engineer had altering the results of certification tests.

The ADT confirmed that the results which may have been altered had no implications on the safety of the structure, or stability of the bridge. However they could lead to an inflation of the cost of maintenance for the bridge to remain in use for 85 years.

An e-mail which, it appears, was sent by the Portuguese engineer responsible for certifying the bridge to his boss, the leading Italian contractor in the winning consortium, says, in Italian: “The project manager is requesting the tensioning of cables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.1 and 6.1 to 105%. As agreed on the phone, I will pretend that I tensioned the cables during the Easter period (the supervisor is not at the site on these days) and will change the values a bit.”

The supervisor referred to in the e-mail was Architect Robert Sant, who was engaged by the authority to oversee the certification process. In fact, he confirmed when contacted by The Times that he was the one to flag the alleged fraud to the authorities as soon as he came across the e-mail last week.

The e-mail was lodged with documentation which was actually handed over to him as part of the final verifications. “I had to vet all documentation and came across this e-mail. I alerted my German partners immediately and we verified that structurally there weren’t any issues with the bridge. But obviously it seems there was misinformation at one stage,” Mr Sant said.