Enemalta man Labour loved to hate retained as consultant

The Labour government has retained the services of Enemalta's former chief executive officer David Spiteri Gingell, whom the party once denigrated as a 'core member' of the so-called 'GonziPN clique' and also for having been responsible for the maligned decision to have the Delimara extension run on heavy fuel oil.

Spiteri Gingell will be retained as a consultant in at least one ministry, MaltaToday has learnt.

But the ministry for energy and water conservation is refusing to publish a copy of Spiteri Gingell's contract of employment or declare his remuneration. "David Spiteri Gingell provided technical support on EU-funded programmes and renewable energy, amongst others, to the previous government. His services were retained in this field," a spokesperson said.

Spiteri Gingell's expertise was highly sought after by the former administration. He authored various government strategies for e-government, a public service code of ethics and the reform of the police force, and chaired the pensions reform working group, as well as occupying key posts at the helm of various government offices and corporations.

Despite repeatedly coming under fire from the then Labour Opposition, today Spiteri Gingell's consultancy services are needed by the same party that had taken him to task over his role in adjudicating the Delimara power station extension to Danish firm BWSC - the engineering firm whose local agents were Vassallo Builders Group, the future employers of Spiteri Gingell.

As CEO of Enemalta, Spiteri Gingell was on the adjudication committee which awarded the controversial €200 million contract to BWSC, and also appointed Lahmeyer International - blacklisted by the World Bank - as consultants to the Delimara extension. Spiteri Gingell had later on admitted it had been "a mistake" not to conduct due diligence on LI, assuming that this had already been carried out on a previous assignment to the firm.

After leaving Enemalta, he went on to become a joint shareholder in a consultancy subsidiary of the Vassallo Builders Group.

As government advisor on climate change, he was an early proponent for natural gas and in 2009 he said the country had to move towards a gas-fired power station by 2015. But the same climate change committee he chaired later removed the obligation to go for natural gas.

Now Minister for the Environment, Leo Brincat had claimed that when in May 2009 the BWSC contract was finally signed, the climate change committee declared that Enemalta could purchase carbon credits from the emissions market to offset its CO2 emissions from using BWSC's heavy fuel oil turbines, instead of investing in natural gas to compensate for the emissions.

In 2010, Joseph Muscat had said his government would relaunch investigations into the controversial contract for the extension of the Delimara power station and offer protection to whistleblowers who would come forward with information that exposed any corruption in the award of the contrac.

In opposition, Labour had lambasted Spiteri Gingell's decision to start working with Vassallo Builders, whose owner Nazzareno Vassallo is a PN donor. Describing his employment with Vassallo Builders as "shocking", Labour had insisted that Spiteri Gingell was one of the people who defended the changes to environmental laws that allowed BWSC to tender for the Delimara extension with a turbine that ran on heavy fuel oil.

Today his personal business, David Spiteri Gingell Consulting, has been incorporated as DSG Consulting Ltd, with equal stakes held by the Vassallo Group and 6PM Holdings plc.

The company has conducted costings of Malta's national environment policy, Malta Enterprise's Life Sciences Park, and corporate reviews of the Government Property Division and Mater Dei's patient information system.