[WATCH] Karl Camilleri sought George Farrugia's advice to build list of clientele after leaving Enemalta

Welcome to MaltaToday's live blog of the PAC hearing into the Auditor General's audit of Enemalta's fuel procurement policy

EXPLAINER | Auditor General's report on Enemalta fuel procurement

12:00 Thank you for following us.

11:59 Meeting adjourned to tomorrow 5pm.

11:56 Camilleri was CEO during the period which the NAO report focuses on. Camilleri says it would have helped if NAO had asked for his comments.

"I am also sorry that Enemalta didn't contact me for feedback. I also appeal the media and political class to give Enemalta the chance to carry out its work. Enemalta is not the cables and the power station but the 1,400 workers who work every day."

11:38 The PAC now turns on the hearing given by David Spiteri Gingell on Monday who claimed interference by the ministry of finance to implement his recruitment programme. According to Camilleri, Spiteri Gingell wanted "to accelerate things very quickly and wanted things to get done there and then".

"But the finance ministry wanted to know exactly how every penny was being spent and the investment it would translate it," he says.

11:31 Camilleri is currently briefing the PAC on capacity building. "Rule of thumb was don't ask for more people than are leaving."

11:23 Back to the FPC's 'evolution' under Camilleri's leadership. He explains that he had introduced an adjudication sheet and plans to improve tender specifications and discussing proposals for e-tendering or e-bidding which so far has not yet been implemented.

11:18 Opposition'ts turn to make questions.

11:12 He asked the chairman's permission to take with him the laptop when leaving Enemalta. Justyne Caruana presses the point that email correspondence sent via his Enemalta contact could not be described as personal.

11:05 Pierre Carabott, project manager at MITC under Austin Gatt. Carabott also used to vet press releases before they are issued by Enemalta. Carabott and Camilleri also went on a skiing holiday together with their respective families, even though the two "weren't so close".

"It was a one-time thing," he says.

After leaving Enemalta, Camilleri took with him a number of documents and a laptop. Some of these documents were kept in his safe at his office. The documents would include reports.. "actually copies". He clarifies that he first took the documents but he gave them back.

"i took them as my personal working copy," he says, pressed by Caruana on why he took the documents in the first place as they belonged to Enemalta.

10:50 Camilleri left Enemalta in November 2011. His term was up after two years, but he also felt it was "time to call it a day". He took a short break and wanted to set up a business consultancy company. His 'contacts list' included George Farrugia and he sought his advice as to build his clientele. "I asked him whether he could refer me to anyone and he said let's meet for coffee," Camilleri says.

10:42 It also "could be" that Camilleri received a hamper from John's Garage, but if he did, he doesn't know why he should have received it.

"I don't remember receiving anything from John's Garage. I used to receive so many hampers I would distribute them again. But, probably I received a hamper from George Farrugia. I remember receiving four bottles wine."

Camilleri insists that his dedication to the job was one where he worked night and day. "I even fell sick with meningitis and I ended up fighting with my wife because I wanted her to bring me my laptop at the hospital. That was my dedication to the job."

10:25 Karl Camilleri has held cordial meetings with Trafigura oil agent George Farrugia. Probably more than once, but he cannot remember. He also "probably" went out to dinner twice with him, "always in the presence of other Enemalta officials".

He remembers a cordial meeting with Farrugia, Trafigura and Totsa in the presence of Alex Tranter. But he doesn't remember the exact number of times. During these meetings they would be telling them to "make sure you take care of the quality of supply and make sure you hit the time window".

He probably also met George Farrugia during oil summits. Asked whether he had met him in Miami, Camilleri says he never went to America. "The ministry called me and told me Karl, stay there don't go to Miami.. we cannot have more people away from the corporation."

There was another occassion when Camilleri contacted Farrugia: this time it was about buying second-hand spare parts for the petroleum divison.

There was also an evening dinner... "very cordial". "I received a last minute call telling me to join them for dinner. There were also the CFO and the chairman." He however cannot remember whether the chairman was Alex Tranter and Edmund Gatt Baldacchino.

"But it was a very cordial meeting... we spoke about our families and the work. It was a very tiring time for me."

10:06 In January 2011, Chief Financial Officer Antoine Galea requested an urgent meeting of the fuel procurement committee a day after a tender was awarded to BB energy. It turned out that TOTSA had called Galea asking why they hadn't won the bid as they felt they had "the best offer". During the "extraordinary" meeting, Galea said the FPC had never received the bids. It turned out that the offer which TOTSA sent had been flagged as "personal" on the chairman's email.

"Since it is the secretary who prints them, the IT system didn't allow the secretary to see the email given that it was flagged 'personal'. We printed it and it still turned out that TOTSA wouldn't have received the bid as it was administratively non-compliant," he says.

Pressed by Justyne Caruana whether it was regular for an oil supplier to contact an FPC member, Camilleri insisted TOTSA had felt they had the best offer and wanted to know what happened. Camilleri couldn't say whether there were other bidders who would call in seeing why their bid hadn't been the one to make it.

"Probably TOTSA knew Galea because, as the CFO, he was responsible of the payments to the suppliers," Camilleri adds. When continually pressed by Caruana about the "irregularity" of the conversation, Karl Camilleri suddenly claimed that he "had been very angry with Galea for giving them information on the tender".

At the same time, he also said TOTSA made the call "out of their own will" because they were surprised they didn't win the bid.

Camilleri adds he didn't know who had called on behalf of TOTSA. Asked whether it was oil trader George Farrugia, Camilleri is adamant that the name "was not Maltese".

10:00 According to the NAO report, an FPC meeting of 12 July, no requests for the reset of the generic mail account password were received by MITA following the 5 July 2011 meeting. A call was then logged on 13 July 2011, again termed as 'password related issues', which NAO considered as corresponding to the reset of the generic mail account password.

9:51 As far as he knew, Camilleri says the FPC would call MITA to reset the password and access the submitted offers.

"I don't drink coffee, I take tea and I remember drinking tea while waiting for the chairman to call MITA, obtain the password, access the account and print the offers."

At this point Busuttil, asks whether he could confirm that the chairman "was always on the phone" with MITA when he would be requesting the password.

"How else could he be able to open the email account?" Camilleri hits back.

However, the Auditor General in his report that there were a number of instances where NAO found no evidence of a call being made. "There was no record of these calls," the NAO official said.

Camilleri insists that without a password, the FPC couldn't access the bids.

9:41 Camilleri says Totsa had an "information advantage", explaining that this information was obtained through its experience in winning bids. "Therefore, Totsa through experience knew which bids to submit," he says.

Given that final results were never made public due to "commercial sensitive information", the other bidders wouldn't know at what prices was the bid won.

9:33 Over 2009 and 2011, Camilleri says he witnessed "an evolution" at Enemalta.

"We started recording an adjudication sheet, which would include bids submitted. I admit, not keeping minutes wasn't such a good idea. But at the end of the day I was just a member of a fuel procurement committee which met five or six times a year. I had just started. I could make suggestions, but at the end of the day, the chairman of the Corporation remains the chairman," the former Chief Executive Officer says.

9:24 Camilleri is currently being grilled on how tenders were issued: whether via email or fax. The former CEO tells the PAC that as far as he can remember, calls would be sent via email. The government side says it cannot understand how he could not know how the full process was carried out. The Labour MPs want reassurances that emails were always sent to some 300 contact names on the register, representing the various oil traders.

Labour MP Luciano Busuttil asks whether Camilleri had ever wondered how was it possible that, out of the 300 emails allegedly sent, always the same four or five companies tendered. Camilleri says that as far as he knew, all emails would be sent out.

Camilleri also comes under fire by Labour MP Justyne Caruana who tells Camilleri she couldn't accept answers such as "as far as I know" and "stand to be corrected".

9:04 The first witness this morning is Karl Camilleri who served as CEO to Enemalta between November 2008 and November 2011. Camilleri was appointed after replying to a call of applications following David Spiteri Gingell's sudden resignation in June 2008. On Monday, Spiteri Gingell told the PAC that he couldn't take the interference from the Finance Ministry anymore. Camilleri's brief was to bring about financial stability and reorganisation at Enemalta. His first step was to appoint four chief officers, including a Chief Internal Audit Officer.

Camilleri's first day as CEO was spent touring the four floors of Enemalta's head office getting to know the employees. "I walked into an empty office," he notes, due to a five-month CEO absence.

9:00 Good morning, and welcome to our live blog from the Public Accounts Committee. You can catch up on some previous sittings here, watching David Spiteri Gingell's testimony and the reaction to his claims from former minister Tonio Fenech.