Parties owe €2.5 million in energy and water bills

The Nationalist and Labour parties have outstanding bills of a combined €2.5 million, which they have owed to Enemalta and the Water Services Corporations for years, MaltaToday has been shown.

This newspaper can now state that the PN has bills running up to €1.9 million, while Labour owes ARMS – the Automated Revenue Management Service – some €600,000 for electricity and water.

The information confirms years of speculation that both parties have enjoyed secret amnesties on their electricity and water bills.

ARMS have beefed up their credit control department as they put more pressure on many of their clients to pay up for their accumulated electricity and water bills.

But as things stand, neither Labour nor the heavily-indebted Nationalist Party are in any state of financial health to settle the pending amounts.

Today ARMS is headed by chief executive Carmen Ciantar, a Labour activist who was publicly visible during electoral rallies as part of the selected audience seated behind Joseph Muscat. Even Enemalta’s new chief executive, Frederick Azzopardi, was elected for Labour on the Mdina local council; while former chairman Charles Mangion was later elected to the House on a casual election.

While political parties retain an influential hold on publicly-owned corporations, various clients who defaulted on their dues have been presented with judicial letters to pay up within a stipulated time, or have their services disconnected.

Both MaltaToday and the Times of Malta have lodged freedom of information requests on the matter.

Both parties have refused to entertain requests to disclose the amounts they owe. In previous comments, the Nationalist Party said any repayment agreements its companies had with public entities were commercial matters.

Freedom of Information request

The Freedom of Information appeals tribunal is currently reviewing an appeal by MaltaToday, on the refusal by the Information and Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) to overturn ARMS’s refusal to disclose information on the monies owed by the political parties to Enemalta and the Water Services Corporation.

MaltaToday believes that political parties have for years enjoyed protracted terms of payment, by being accorded repayment programmes that common taxpayers are not granted, and other sorts of benefits by the state-owned utility companies.

MaltaToday has told ARMS and the IDPC that consumers are at a disadvantage to political parties, which cannot be considered “normal clients” as ARMS insists they are.

“We tried to insist with ARMS, and the IDPC, that political parties field for election the very people who might end up being energy minister, or Enemalta chairman, or WSC chairman, even chief executive.

“The incestuous relationship between party and state in Malta is symbolised by the fact that ARMS has granted political parties extremely generous terms of credit on their pending energy bills,” Matthew Vella, editor maltatoday.com.mt, who filed the FOIA request, said.

ARMS refused the request, applying an Article 5 exemption, because ARMS was a commercial company owned by the government.

MaltaToday appealed the refusal, saying the IDPC had not carried out an appropriate public interest test on whether disclosing the information would be of more benefit to the public, than were it to be kept secret.

In its submissions to the IDPC appeals tribunal, MaltaToday insisted that ARMS was benefiting from a wide array of legal exemptions that allowed it to treat political parties on the same footing as consumers.

“In reality, they are not. Parties field candidates who on being elected, are eligible to be appointed minister responsible for ARMS. In the last election, unsuccessful candidates were appointed chairmen and chief executives of Enemalta, WSC, and ARMS,” Vella said.