The great whodunnit

As was expected, the National Audit Office (NAO) report on the €274 million mega-contract to build and operate residential blocks and a kitchen at St Vincent de Paul Residence home for the elderly found a series of serious shortcomings, missing documentation and oversight failures.

The NAO found that the family ministry and the department of contracts “acted in breach of legislative provisions” and breached public procurement regulations in the deal, which it said could potentially be deemed invalid.

Political responsibility for the project overlapped between administrations, with Michael Farrugia as minister and Justyne Caruana as parliamentary secretary responsible for the direct order and tendering process through to mid-2017, and minister Michael Falzon and parliamentary secretary Anthony Agius Decelis becoming responsible following the 2017 general election.

The NAO also commented that it was “incredulous” at the role played by parliamentary secretaries politically responsible for the project, saying that “their failure to enquire as to the regularity of this procurement is in clear breach of their duty arising from the political post held.”

The agreement for the management of the additional blocks was not brought to the attention of Cabinet, despite its cost and the project’s national importance.

The NAO therefore concluded that no political authorisation had been granted to enter into a negotiated procedure with the consortium.

Incredibly, these four politicians seem to have acted as paralysed spectators rather than as the more important players in this morbid tragi-comedy. This did not go down well with the Auditor General who put it this way: “Even if the project was not referred to the parliamentary secretaries for their authorisation, their failure to enquire as to the regularity of this procurement is in clear breach of their duty arising from the political post held.”

Yet I tend to sympathise with them as it is obvious they were facing a conundrum and feared that taking action to stop the rot would have put them in a worse situation. I am even tempted to ask whether they felt that their political career was at risk, had they attempted to do so. Not that this is a good reason for shirking from one’s duty, of course.

According to the NAO report, St Vincent de Paul committed itself to spending hundreds of millions of euro without seeking clearance from the finance ministry and the deal appeared to have been concluded “without the sanction of Cabinet or the parliamentary secretaries” responsible for the home.

Among the concerns highlighted were questions over the legal basis of the way the contract was entered into, the absence of authorisation, including from senior politicians, and concerns that parts of the deal did not even come close to value for money.

It correctly expressed serious concern about the way with which the original tender call included a requirement for “additional investment”, without specifying what that investment could be.

What was originally a €57 million contract to build a kitchen at the home for the elderly and provide catering services to its residents was somehow linked to an “additional investment” of two additional residential blocks and an annual cash contribution of €1.5 million over 10 years. The cash contribution was subsequently converted into the construction of two additional blocks, through a negotiated procedure.

The residential blocks were all to be operated by the consortium that won the tender, and that had been providing meals at St Vincent de Paul through a direct order since July 2014.

How this metamorphosis took place is not at all clear.

The NAO report says that it is ‘likely’ that the entire €274 million agreement is not in line with the law and could be deemed invalid. It added that the absence of government endorsement for such a major contract was also “conspicuous”.

Incidentally, or not, the government has twice refused to publish the contract between St Vincent de Paul and the consortium that supposedly won the tender bid – something that should raise suspicions, if not alarm.

I took the trouble of downloading and perusing the entire NAO report (over 150 pages) in an attempt to find out who was responsible for this mess. No such luck. The NAO report explains why the unorthodox deal was illegal and did not give value for money, but who the mastermind who concocted the contract and built it up slowly but with obviously premeditated steps to amount to the preposterous sum of €274 million was, is a mystery. Believing this process to have resulted from some coincidence would be ‘incredible’.

Behind the scenes, someone must have thought that they were very astute and intelligent and must have also figured that all the rest of us are idiots who can only chant ‘Viva l-Labour, viva l-Labour’ without ever using our brains.

The Prime Minister’s reaction to the NAO report was very weak, all the time opting to emphasise the merits and benefits of the ‘investment’. He said that the NAO report was being analysed and necessary action would be taken once the facts had been established, as if this was not already done by the NAO! He even agreed with the Auditor General that the proposed contract should have first been raised at Cabinet level for approval. He then went on to wax lyrical about the project’s benefits, saying that these are not few and “we need to continue benefiting from them”. In this manner, Robert Abela completely ignored the fact that that the government could have obtained the same benefits while spending much less than it did. Is this of no concern to him?

The NAO report, moreover, did not delve into whether there is any civil servant, an appointed person of trust, the persons who run Saint Vincent de Paul or a political figure that approved this metamorphosis in all its stages.

This is a great political and administrative ‘whodunnit’ with whoever did it not even appearing in any pages of the NAO report.

Trying to find whodunnit is akin to Sherlock Holmes trying to nab his arch-enemy and nemesis Professor James Moriarty. Will the Maltese citizens who provided the €274 million from their taxes ever come to know who was the puppet master behind the scenes?