The sole director of a cleaning firm that received more than €9 million in direct orders in three years owed the Inland Revenue Department over €4 million in unpaid taxes.

Records show that, in October, 2017, X Clean director Denis Xuereb had been asked through a judicial letter to pay over €530,000 in unpaid taxes. 

Denis Xuereb

According to the official document, he had not paid taxes in the previous eight years.

A few months later, Mr Xuereb, this time as director and owner of cleaning firm Euro Hygiene International Ltd, received another bill to settle €3.5 million in unpaid taxes.

A spokesman for the Inland Revenue Department declined to say whether Mr Xuereb had regularised his position since, adding issues related to tax dues could not be discussed.

According to the Registry of Companies, Euro Hygiene International Ltd is no longer trading and had not filed its accounts for many years.

Mr Xuereb founded X Clean in April 2015 to be able to service St Vincent De Paul Home for the Elderly, in Luqa, since his other company was in an insolvent state. 

X Clean has not submitted any audited accounts so far.

The Times of Malta has reported that, through the direct intervention of the Family Affairs Ministry, at the time headed by Michael Farrugia, the administration of St Vincent De Paul had been directed in March 2015 to award the cleaning services contract to Mr Xuereb through a direct order. 

Although this had originally to be a temporary measure for a maximum of six months, the direct order kept being renewed every six months.

He had not paid taxes in the previous eight years

In the meantime, while until March 2015 the costs incurred for cleaning by the home for the elderly used to be about €100,000 a month, costs started ballooning reaching about €300,000 a month though other ‘services’ were added when X Clean took over.

It was only last December, after the matter was raised in this newspaper, that the government published a call for tenders. The contract was not awarded yet.

Contracts Department director general Tony Cachia had said the tender took long to be issued as it was “complicated” and required a lot of time to conclude. 

Mr Cachia also pointed out that his department had not approved the provision of other services except for cleaning.

Documents show that X Clean charged St Vincent De Paul Home for a raft of other services including hairdressing, engineering, gardening, street cleaning and others.