A Gozitan building contractor, who after the last election was granted whistle-blower status by the Attorney General to testify in ongoing court proceedings against the husband of former Gozo minister Giovanna Debono, was awarded another €210,000 in government jobs by the Ministry for Gozo, the Times of Malta is informed.
In February, this newspaper reported that since turning state witness, Joseph Cauchi from Għarb, known as Sansun, had received a number of direct orders and tenders connected to government school projects in Gozo.
With a value exceeding €450,000, the contracts were awarded by the Foundation for Tomorrow Schools (FTS) and in many instances Mr Cauchi was paid through hand-delivered cheques from Edward Caruana – the Education Minister Evarist Bartolo’s canvasser – currently under investigation over serious claims of corruption and fraud.
Over and above the work given to Mr Cauchi by the Education Ministry, the government, through the Gozo Ministry, has also awarded Mr Cauchi or his company – Gozo Renovations Ltd – an additional 10 contracts with a total value of more than €210,000.
In most cases, the public jobs awarded to Mr Cauchi were not given through a competitive tender but only after a call for quotations.
The largest of the new contracts handed to Mr Cauchi by the Gozo Ministry was an €85,509 job for the construction of a lift at the ministry offices in Victoria.
Apart from other small construction jobs, Mr Cauchi was also paid tens of thousands of euros for supplying the Ministry for Gozo with a skid-steer loader and a mini excavator on a period contract basis.
The new list of contracts awarded to Mr Cauchi was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act after the Ministry for Gozo refused to supply the information.
The 10 new contracts awarded to Mr Cauchi, when added to the FTS jobs, reach almost €700,000.
Contacted by this newspaper, Mr Cauchi would not reply to questions and hung up his phone.
Last year, soon after Mr Caruana was removed from the FTS following suspicions of fraud on building contracts connected to Gozo schools, Mr Cauchi had sent an e-mail to Mr Bartolo asking him to reinstate his canvasser.
Thanking him for the amount of work he had received from the FTS since Labour returned to power, underlining that he “was never given so much work”, he pleaded with Mr Bartolo to send Mr Caruana back to Gozo.
“I would like to tell you that what happened in the last weeks [removal of Mr Caruana] is very bad for the future of the schools and our [Labour] party”, Mr Cauchi wrote in an e-mail to the minister’s hotmail account.
“If you don’t want problems send Edward back to Gozo as he is the person you need here to get things going,” Mr Cauchi said.
According to documents presented to the police last September by the former FTS CEO Philip Rizzo, Mr Bartolo’s canvasser had personally distributed to various Gozo contractors some €9 million worth of payments.
It was later found that a few of these contractors were also working on a private project of some 10 apartments which Mr Caruana was building in Rabat, Malta.
Mr Cauchi was one of the contractors paid through this method for his government contracts, with Mr Caruana handing him payments totalling €247,578.
Despite the documented evidence given to the police, Mr Caruana has not been arraigned in court yet.
Last week, the police said that the investigations on the FTS corruption case are close to being concluded.