Caruana Galizia family pressures Siemens to seek power station deal cancellation

Siemens should sue to have all Electrogas contracts rescinded on the basis the deals were procured through corruption, the Caruana Galizia family believes.

The family of murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia wrote to German company Siemens, a partner in the Electrogas consortium, asking it to “declare the extent of its knowledge of the Electrogas money laundering and kickback scheme”.

Daphne was murdered in October 2017 and one of the business partners in the Electrogas consortium, Yorgen Fenech, stands charged in court with masterminding her assassination. The consortium is made up of Siemens, Azerbaijan's State-owned Socar and Maltese partners Gasan, Tumas and Paul Apap Bologna.

The Caruana Galizias insisted that until it outed the corruption, Siemens could not move forward from the power station scandal, and the family “will not be able to get full justice for Daphne”.

“We ask Siemens to take the contracts Electrogas has signed into arbitration, or sue to have them rescinded, on the basis that they were procured by the corruption that Daphne was assassinated for exposing. Until it does, the people of Malta will be unable to re-negotiate a fair and legitimate deal,” the family wrote in a letter sent on Sunday, World Press Freedom Day.

Read the full letter here:

Daphne had received a cache of emails belonging to Electrogas before she was assassinated and was working on them in the weeks leading up to her murder.

She had also exposed the existence of Dubai-based company 17 Black, which was owned by Yorgen Fenech. 17 Black was one of the target clients of the Panama companies set up by former minister Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff.

The letter reminds Siemens that it made public and legally binding commitments, as part of a settlement for criminal action in the United States, to change its role from a negative to a positive one in the fight against corruption.

It also accused the German company of partnering with Fenech, the Gasan and Apap Bologna families to capitalise on the influence they exert over decision makers.