Police to revisit presidential pardon to State’s witness

The Malta police have decided to revisit a presidential pardon awarded to oil trader George Farrugia, ostensbly in light of the meagre information provided by the witness.

Farrugia, of Aikon Ltd, was at the centre of an intricate kickback oil scandal involving Enemalta officials and oil company Trafigura. Farrugia was also the importer of oil from TOTSA, a Total company.

A police official told MaltaToday: "We did not need George Farrugia to proceed with our arraignment, and apart from the 'relatively' small kickbacks there has been nothing new."

Farrugia, who was a central figure in the oil scandal exposed by MaltaToday, should have been investigated back in August 2011, when a member of the Security Service was presented with incriminating documents which were eventually passed on to former MSS head Godfrey Scicluna, who then passed on the papers to a member of former minister Austin Gatt's secretariat.

The file, which had papers removed from it, was once again passed on to another official, from Tonio Fenech's finance ministry, which directed the Tax Compliance Unit to investigate.

In spite of all the evidence, some of which was published by MaltaToday, neither the police nor the Security Service chose to take any action at the time against George Farrugia.

The documents pertained to Farrugia's siphoning off of oil revenues from his family company Powerplan, which was prior to 2012 the agent for Trafigura and Totsa, to his personal company Aikon Ltd. When Farrugia's borthers and partners threatened to take judicial action, an out-of-court settlement was reached. Farrugia took control of Trafigura and Totsa, while a company that formerly served as Aikon's nominee director - Intershore Fiduciary Services - resigned from the directorship.

When a member of the Farrugia family passed on the documents alleging that Farrugia was siphoning off oil revenues to the MSS, the evidence were not investigated by the police but by the finance ministry's Tax Compliance Unit.

Although the evidence suggested that Farrugia was funelling his own revenues to a Swiss bank account undeclared to even his nomintee directors, the TCU investigation never managed to pin down Farrugia as the beneficial owner of Aikon Ltd.

In January 2013, MaltaToday uncovered the kickbacks links that showed that Farrugia paid monies from Trafigura into bank accounts belonging to former MOBC chief executive and Enemalta consultant Frank Sammut for the sale of oil to Enemalta. Sammut was charged with corruption, along with former Enemalta chairman Tancred Tabone. Others implicated in the ensuring poloice investigation are Francis Portelli and Anthony Cassar of Island Bunker Oils, with whom Sammut and Tabone were in business at IBOL; and former Enemalta officials Tarcisio Mifsud and Alfred Grech.