Malta airport owners hint at possible sale of 36% stake

One of the owners of the Malta International Airport could sell off its stake "in the near term" according to chief financial officer Alain-Pierre Raynaud, who spoke to analysts of the MIA shareholding as well as stakes in power plants in Astoria, New York, as possible assets up for sale.

The Canadian engineers own 36.13% of the private, 40% shareholding of MIA that is owned by the Malta Mediterranean Link consortium: the other partners are Vienna International Airport with 53.24%, and the Bianchi Group, with 10.63%.

The company made a surprise disclosure of a possible US$45.6 million loss from a client's attempt to draw on a credit line for the Libya work that it abandoned during the uprising against dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Libyan projects at the time of Gaddafi's removal from power included an airport, a prison and a water line network known as the Great Man-Made River.

Earlier this year, a number of SNC Lavalin employees were accused of paying US$160 million in bribes to obtain business in Libya, including the purchase of luxury yachts for the son of the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi, according to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police search warrant.

The World Bank has also slapped SNC-Lavalin with a record-setting sanction, barring the engineering firm and 100 of its subsidiaries from bidding on any of the bank's development projects for the next decade, after SNC agreed not to dispute charges that it conspired to bribe several Bangladeshi public officials in an effort to secure a $50 million bridge contract.

The bank said it has uncovered evidence that SNC conspired to bribe public officials in Cambodia and that it had passed that information along to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are already probing the company's activities in Libya, Algeria and Bangladesh.

The 10-year prohibition was negotiated between the company and the bank and is the largest debarment that a company has agreed to as part of a settlement since the bank began sanctioning firms that seek to corrupt public officials.

Because the bank has an agreement with four of the world's other international development banks to uphold each other's sanctions, the ban will effectively shut SNC out of many international development projects, Stephen Zimmermann, the director of operations for the World Bank's investigative arm, said.

SNC derives little business directly from the World Bank.