Yellow Pages, a broken computer and a €220 million BWSC contract

In April 2010 the National Audit Office published its investigations into the award of the contract to BWSC for the Delimara Power Station Extension. The NAO said it did not “come across any hard and conclusive evidence of corruption… [because] of the lack of cooperation from certain stakeholders who contended that they could not recall certain events or information. A case in point is Mr Joseph Mizzi, local representative for the tenderer awarded the contract, who was considered one of the key players throughout this inquiry”.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday we had nearly eight hours of hearings by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee where we summoned witnesses to try and shed some light on what really happened. Have we become any wiser after these sittings? Not really... apart from the fact that we got to know that it was thanks to the Yellow Pages that Joseph Mizzi got the contact details of Vassallo Buildings to propose them to BWSC to carry out the construction and civil engineering part of the contract.

In the Tuesday hearing, we also discovered Mizzi’s amnesia when summoned by NAO spread to his electronic equipment in front of the PAC. NAO said that it summoned Mizzi on “three separate occasions, [and] he repeatedly cited lack of memory when asked certain questions”.

In the PAC sitting, I demanded that he hands over all the correspondence between him and BWSC from the year 2006 to 2009. He bluntly said that his computer had crashed and that he had lost all the information, and that he did not have any hard copies of his correspondence. Imagine dealing with a €220 million contract and keeping no files and depending on the Yellow Pages for your business proposals!

BWSC have already been paid most of the money due to them. Most of the extension of the power station ahs been built and here we were in parliament, discussing what happened years earlier. NAO had said that it did not have certain tools at its disposal (that police have when carrying out criminal investigations) to investigate the case properly. The PAC was similarly constrained.

Imagine asking people to file in, one by one, and asking them whether they had received any money or had been approached by anyone to award the contract to BWSC! Is this a serious way of investigating and trying to find out persons who are very careful to cover their tracks when they do what they know is immoral and illegal? After taking all the necessary precautions not to get caught, do you expect a corrupt person to turn up in parliament, sit down, and kiss the Crucifix and say: “I am corrupt. Sorry, I will not do it again. Good evening”?

I asked a number of persons who were summoned as witnesses to hand over documents that will help us to try and get at the truth. While asking for such documents, I know how weak this is. As if anyone is going to hand over incriminating documents to the PAC!

Hard evidence proving corruption is always very difficult to come by, even when the police search and seize computers and retrieve the data in them, cooperate with mobile and telephony companies to get transcripts of phone calls, work hand in hand with financial institutions to investigate personal accounts.

Neither the NAO nor the PAC had these investigative tools at their disposal, so there we were, interviewing people and depending only on their honesty to cooperate with us and tell us the truth.

I have no doubt that most of those who appeared in front of us are honest people who do their duty. But I am equally convinced that some of those who were summoned to testify did not tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

On Wednesday, BWSC’s official Martin Kok Jensen contradicted Joseph Mizzi’s Tuesday version – that BWSC had contacted him after he left ASL to represent them in Malta. Kok Jensen said that it was the other way round: it was Mizzi who contacted them.

Kok Jensen insisted that they contracted Mizzi because of his technical competence. Asked whether they were also impressed with his ability to network and use his contacts within Enemalta and the local political elite, Kok Jensen said that it would not have been the first time that they find people who boast of their contacts to try and impress. When pressed on the fact that they praised Mizzi’s ability to deliver, Kok Jensen said “We leave nothing to coincidence”.

BWSC’s agent – Joseph Mizzi – told the PAC that he has no emails or other documents of his correspondence with BWSC between 2006 and 2009 as his computer crashed, resulting in him losing all this correspondence. While his lawyer, Dr JJ Vella (who was Enemalta’s lawyer for many years) said they have to check to see what correspondence he still has, Mizzi answered bluntly: “I have no documents to give. None whatsoever, as I have lost everything”.

Mizzi also said that he did not know the former Mosta PN mayor and financial supporter of the PN Nazzareno Vassallo before his company won the construction and civil engineering contract to build the extension of the Delimara power station with BWSC. He got to know of Vassallo through the Yellow Pages. He also said that he did not know that the German company Lahmayer International he represented was blacklisted by the World Bank because of corruption. He said had he known he might not have worked with them.

Mizzi claimed that he did not know that BWSC started working in 2005 to change the emission levels and generating plant established by Legal Notice 329 of 2002. He was not involved in changing it. He also said he was not involved in the tender specification changes after this legal notice was changed. 

Mizzi said that he did not know who was being referred to in an email he wrote to BWSC about the need to tap a higher source in the political hierarchy to help secure the contract. He said he had never used the word ‘hierarchy’ before, as his English is not that good. He said he wrote that email on the order of ASL, the company he worked for.

In a statement under oath appearing before the PAC, Joseph Rizzo, chairman and majority shareholder of ASL said: “Joe Mizzi did not inform me of all the contacts and meetings he had with BWSC, Enemalta officials or other relevant authorities relating to this tender. I did not instruct him to make any political contacts. Some of his dealings with BWSC were concealed from me and targeted at advancing his personal interests and not that of ASL”.

Rizzo was the main witness heard yesterday by the PAC as it held the second of two sittings on the report of the Auditor General‘s investigation in the award of the tender of the Delimara Power Station extension to BWSC.

Joseph Rizzo told the PAC that in an email dated 10 May 2005, Joe Mizzi informed BWSC’s Anders Langhorn that “we need to tap another source higher up in the political hierarchy”. Rizzo said that in proceedings before the National Audit Office and when testifying before the PAC, Mizzi had said that Rizzo instructed him to write that. Rizzo stated: “This is a claim that I categorically deny. Mr Mizzi was conducting negotiations with a free hand”.

Rizzo went on to tell PAC that in 1990, Mizzi had already used a similar phrase “to consult with higher quarters”. Rizzo said he did not know what ‘source’ Mizzi was referring to “but they seemed to have impressed BWSC officials to such an extent that they wanted to deal only with Joe Mizzi to the exclusion of ASL”.

Rizzo said that he became aware of how Mizzi was operating behind his back in the dealings with BWSC through emails he retrieved from his computer after he left the company in October 2005.

“I concluded that Mizzi had held meetings with Enemalta’s officials and BWSC in the first few months of 2005 and that he had not informed me of all of them, just as he had not copied me in on all relevant emails”.

Rizzo went on to say: “Before the Auditor General… I called him [Mizzi] a bluffer. I should have been far more clear and described him with the term used for people who do not tell the truth”.