Updated | Tonio Fenech denies €5,000 gift, ‘Farrugia is lying’

Updated with statement by finance minister Tonio Fenech, David Gonzi at 9:23pm

Labour MP Evarist Bartolo has alleged that finance minister Tonio Fenech accepted a gift worth €5,000 from oil trader George Farrugia, shortly after becoming minister responsible for Enemalta, in 2010.

In a startling statement, Bartolo said that Fenech was "directly" given the present by Farrugia himself.

The revelation came in response to a press conference in which Fenech alleged that Labour candidate and party financial administrator Joe Cordina was "behind the oil scandal", as the director-shareholder of Intershore Fiduciary Services - the nominee company that owned George Farrugia's Aikon Ltd, before the trader assumed full ownership in January 2011.

In a statement by Fenech, the finance minister said it was "untrue that Farrugia gave me a gift as alleged by Bartolo. This is a lie that Labour is trying to create as diversionary tactic after it was revealed that the PL's financial controller Joe Cordina is at the heart of the oil scandal."

Fenech said he will file for slander against Labour MPs Evarist Bartolo and Chris Cardona, who repeated the allegation at the press conference. "If George Farrugia made this allegation, Farrugia is lying as well. I never received any gift from him, or of any value mentioned by Bartolo."

Earlier, Labour MP Chris Cardona said that Joe Cordina ran a nominee company that assumed ownership of Aikon, but was not involved directly in its running.

"Cordina did not anything to do with Aikon or with Aikon business. All contracts in Aikon signed with Trafigura were signed by George Farrugia personally, in his name."

Bartolo also announced that Cordina would not be running for office, and that he had suspended himself from running the party's finances.

"There is responsibility to be carried here, and we do things differently from the PN. That's what we told Lawrence Gonzi and Austin Gatt," Bartolo said.

The MP also said that Fenech's accusation that Cordina was responsible for any illegal activity in Aikon, would imply that the same level of wrongdoing on the part of Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi's son David: a lawyer who was company secretary of a firm that took €15 million in laundered monies from the scandal-ridden Maugeri Foundation. David Gonzi had said he had no knowledge of the company's activities, which was a subsidiary of the firm he was company secretary for.

But Bartolo was placed under equal pressure when asked why Labour deputy leader Toni Abela was not asked to resign over allegations of drug possession inside the PL's Safi club. Bartolo insisted that Abela did not need to resign since no wrongdoing had transpired over having omitted to report the 2010 incident to the police: but as it turns out, so has Cordina not done any wrongdoing, according to Labour.

In a statement, David Gonzi said he was not secretary of Sib Laborarties Limited, as had been implied, and that at no stage was he involved in the operations, administration or management of Sib. "I never gave a service to Sib Laboratories. That is why Bartolo's implication on me is totally unfounded and mistaken. I was engaged by a legal firm to provide the services of company secretary to clients of this firm. Sib Laboratories was not one of them: I have services, which I now no longer do, to Sib Ltd, and not to Sib Laboratories. Bartolo's allegation was already denied back on 30 April 2012."