Austin Gatt – ‘I did not appoint Sammut to fuel procurement committee’

The former minister responsible for Enemalta, Austin Gatt, has denied appointing Frank Sammut, the former chief executive of the MOBC, to the state utility's fuel procurement committee.

A MaltaToday investigation has revealed that Sammut was paid a consultancy fee by commodities supplier Trafigura for oil consignments to Enemalta, paid through a Swiss bank account whose beneficiary was a Gibraltar company he owned.

A police investigation has already been launched into the case.

In a statement, Austin Gatt - whose portfolio as investments minister between 2003 and 2010 included Enemalta - said Sammut had been a member of the internal Enemalta committee since the 1980s, when he was a member of the Enemalta board of directors.

MaltaToday is informed that in November 2005, Gatt appointed a fuel procurement committee to advise the board of Enemalta. The committee was composed of former Bank of Valletta chairman Roderick Chalmers, Saivour Briffa, Joe Falzon, Godwin Debono and Gordon Cordina. The board was a successor committee to another advisory committee appointed months earlier by Gatt.

"The only changes that took place from 2003 onwards was that the committee had to include other members of wider technical competence, as well as that of the Central Bank and the finance ministry, so as to enhance this committee," Gatt said.

"The appointments to the committee were made by the Enemalta board of directors. There was never any need or desire from any minister to have political trust from this committee, whose remit was guided by purely technical competences."

Gatt said that the Labour Party had refused an offer to appoint a person to this committee, and instead wanted the committee to report to parliament. "I did not agree with political interference in the work of the fuel procurement committee because of the nature of its technical work."

Gatt has so far claimed he was never aware of any allegations of corruption in the procurement of fuel for Enemalta.

Sammut's contract as chief executive of the Mediterranean Oil Bunkering Corporation was terminated in 2004, after a Cabinet decision for the MOBC to cease bunkering operations and instead assume the role of an oil storage depot.

He had been first appointed as MOBC's managing director in 1997. Although he was not an employee of Enemalta, Sammut occupied a position on the Enemalta board of directors until 1990, and a consultant to the energy corporation until 1994.