Former Enemalta chief sets up consulting firm with Vassallo Builders

The former CEO of national energy company Enemalta, who sat on the adjudication committee of the controversial €200 million power station extension, is a joint shareholder in a consultancy subsidiary of the Vassallo Builders Group.

David Spiteri Gingell (pictured below) left Enemalta in June 2008 shortly after serving on the adjudication committee that recommended that Delimara's power station extension contract be awarded to Danish firm BWSC and its local representatives Vassallo Builders.

While the political and environmental controversy on the tender award and the use of heavy fuel oil to fire the power station would rage on in years to come, since then Spiteri Gingell gently eased himself into the influential business group led by Nazzareno Vassallo.

Today his personal business, David Spiteri Gingell Consulting, has been incorporated as DSG Consulting Ltd, with equal stakes held by the Vassallo Group and 6PM Holdings plc. The company has conducted costings of Malta's national environment policy, Malta Enterprise's Life Sciences Park, and corporate reviews of the Government Property Division and Mater Dei's patient information system.

After leaving Enemalta, in August 2008 he was made a senior officer of Datatrak Holdings, which rebranded itself as Loqus in 2009 with Spiteri Gingell as a shareholder. At Loqus, he provided the Vassallo Builders Group with a strategic management review.

In July 2011, Spiteri Gingell was appointed director of emCare360, a subsidiary of Caremalta Group, Vassallo's elderly-care provider. EmCare360 is partly (25%) owned by software group 6pm Holdings, in which Vassallo Builders Group recently acquired an 18% stake.

EmCare360 is now positioning itself to become a leader in IT solutions for the healthcare industry. Amongst its directors is former PN secretary-general Joe Saliba, a personal friend of Nazzareno Vassallo.

A major area of interest for emCare360 is the provision of the infrastructure to store medical records and files in a database for Malta's public healthcare reform.

Spiteri Gingell's expertise is highly sought by the government. He authored various government strategies for e-government, a public service code of ethics, and the reform of the police force. He also chaired its climate change committee and pensions working group, and authored the last rent laws reforms.

As climate change advisor, he was an early proponent for natural gas and in 2009 said the country had to move towards a gas-fired power station by 2015. But the committee later removed the obligation to go for natural gas.

Enemalta courted controversy later by awarding the Delimara power station extension contract to BWSC, which proposed a diesel-fired engine, rather than Israeli firm Bateman's combined-cycle gas turbine.

Labour MP Leo Brincat has claimed that when in May 2009 the BWSC contract was finally signed, the climate change committee declared that Enemalta could purchase carbon credits from the emissions market to offset its CO2 emissions, instead of investing in natural gas to compensate for the emissions.

"This had never previously been said in the original January 2009 report," Brincat said.

An investigation by the European Commission into whether laws were changed to accommodate the installation of diesel technology like BWSC's, found nothing irregular.