Former Labour deputy leader Anġlu Farrugia “cannot say” if the party was approached by businessmen involved in the power station deal prior to the March 2013 election because he was not involved in the matter.
Dr Farrugia, who is now Speaker of the House of Representatives, had famously raised the alarm about big contractors and businessmen getting too close to the Labour Party when he was forced by Joseph Muscat to resign his post in December 2012.
Dr Farrugia said he had “absolutely not [been] involved in the process” when asked about the power station project.
The Times of Malta reported last week that power station shareholder Yorgen Fenech was identified as the owner of 17 Black, an entity mentioned in leaked e-mails as a source of income for the Panama companies owned by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi.
According to a leaked e-mail from Nexia BT, they were set to earn $2 million from 17 Black and another Dubai company called Macbridge, whose owner is unknown.
Dr Farrugia had said in a 2013 interview with the Times of Malta that the fourth floor of the Labour Party headquarters in Ħamrun was the favoured venue for meetings with big businessmen.
Asked if he had ever spotted the power station businessmen on the fourth floor, Dr Farrugia said yesterday that when he mentioned contractors in his 2013 interview, he was not making references to any particular people.
“I was being very generic when I used those words in the circumstances prevailing at the time,” he replied.
He remarked that what he had said was in the past and now he was completely out of the political scene.
“I’m not even a member of a political party. So, to answer your question, I’ll tell you straight away: I said what I had to say five years ago.
“I’m not aware what happened after that. I’m not even in contact. I am the first full-time Speaker here and I am completely focused on parliamentary work,” Dr Farrugia said.
Mr Fenech, together with fellow local investors Mark Gasan, of Gasan Group, and Paul Apap Bologna, of CP Holdings, all deny ever discussing the power station project prior to the March 2013 election.
A presentation bearing similarities to the project delivered under the Labour government was given to the Nationalist Party in 2009. Former Electrogas shareholders Gasol, a company called International Power and a Maltese investor group compromising a “diverse group of Maltese citizens and prominent business families” were mentioned in the presentation.
The three local business giants formed a consortium with Gasol, Germany company Siemens and Azerbaijan’s State-owned energy firm Socar. Known as Electrogas, the consortium was assembled in time to submit an expression of interest for the power station project.
Gasol later dropped out of the project.