Gonzi denies receiving oil trader emails from Security Service member

Former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi has denied that a member of his security detail in 2011 gave him documents with allegations of irregularities in the procurement of oil supplies for Enemalta.

Gonzi, who is no longer an MP, issued a short statement yesterday evening, in reaction to a sworn testimony by MaltaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan, who cited press reports on the subject.

MaltaToday had already asked Gonzi the same question during the 2013 election, on 26 February, specifically about a member of the Malta Security Services who had informed him in the summer of 2011 of the invoices and documents pertaining to oil trader George Farrugia's activities, himself accused by his family of siphoning some €6 million in commissions on oil imports from family business Powerplan.

MaltaToday had specifically asked Gonzi about the MSS member who informed him of Farrugia's activities, and of accusations that he had siphoned off his family business's profits to a hidden company, Aikon Ltd, with related invoices. Gonzi reportedly told the officer to report the allegation to the Commissioner of Police, without taking any further ownership of the matter.

Asked about this in an impromptu question and answer session with the press at the University of Malta, the prime minister did not deny having been informed of the Farrugia invoices: "I have always insisted publicly, that whenever I had any information, I would always refer it directly to the Commissioner of Police, because it is the duty of all constitutional authorities to take responsibility for such investigations, and they have the power that the law gives them to make these investigations. And that's what I did as my duty was.

"Any report, whatever it was or wherever it came from, was passed on to the authorities [to investigate]," Gonzi had said.

Gonzi refused to elaborate any further when asked about what he knew on the case concerning Aikon Ltd, the company Farrugia used to import fuel from Trafigura and Total.

Saviour Balzan's testimony

Saviour Balzan deposited Monday a cache of previously unreleased emails showing ongoing communication between oil importer George Farrugia, members of TOTSA and Trafigura, whom he represented in Malta, as well as Enemalta officials like former chairman Tancred Tabone.

Balzan is being sued by former energy minister Austin Gatt, in a defamation suit related to the corruption inside Enemalta that led to corruption charges filed against Tabone and a former consultant Frank Sammut.

MaltaToday had broken the story that Sammut was paid commissions by Trafigura through an offshore account, for the supply of oil to the state energy corporation Enemalta.

READ MORE Emails from Farrugia showing he met Austin Gatt

Balzan told a court that a member of former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi's security detail had already been handed the cache of emails in the summer of 2011. The security officer had approached Gonzi with the information, but was told to relay the information to his superior, Malta Security Services head Godfrey Scicluna. Scicluna, Balzan said, had communicated on the matter with a high-level official inside Gatt's ministry.

Balzan told the court that he had been informed that a number of these documents had been discarded and shredded, with the remainder passed on to the finance ministry. The matter was then passed on to the Tax Compliance Unit to investigate, but little was made of the suggestion that bribes could have been paid on the supply of oil to Enemalta.

TCU investigation

A tax investigation in Aikon Ltd was launched in August 2011, because the documents from the MSS officer were passed on to the TCU, and not to the economic crimes unit. The tax investigation is believed to have focused on under-declaration of taxation, although Tonio Fenech had also said the TCU failed to connect Aikon Ltd to oil trader George Farrugia.

Fenech had denied having known of the case or that it involved oil trader George Farrugia, who has turned State's evidence on the payment of kickbacks from Trafigura to Enemalta officials on fuel oil procurement.

The minister later revealed that it had been the MSS that passed on the documents to his head of secretariat Alan Caruana, who passed them on to the TCU without seeing what the documents were, and without informing the minister.

Fenech said it was the first time since being appointed minister that a tax probe was being requested by the head of the secret service. Both the MSS and the TCU are not answerable to the finance ministry.

Fenech however was informed that the TCU's investigation, dealing with invoices covering the period 2004-2010, had only focused on the shareholders of Aikon Ltd at the time, a nominee company called Intershore Fiduciary Services. The nominee company had however resigned its services to Farrugia's Aikon Ltd in January 2011, after Farrugia was sued by the John's Group on allegedly hiving off profits from Powerplan to Aikon Ltd.