Former Enemalta CEO declines to comment on 665 'hidden' case files

Former Enemalta CEO Louis Giordimaina has declined to comment on the mystery of the 665 cases of confirmed electricity theft upon which no action had been taken to prosecute the consumers or recover the monies.

On his part, former finance minister Tonio Fenech insists there was no mystery: "These files were not hidden or put away. They were a backlog of cases as the team responsible of theft cases was only made up of two."

The cases date between 2006 and 2011, although information provided by Enemalta includes the year 2005 as well. Fenech insists a number of cases go back to the 1980s and that the management at Enemalta had been very much aware of these files.

But when contacted by MaltaToday, Louis Giordimaina - who came under fire by the Opposition - refused to comment: "Appreciate that this is currently under investigation and therefore it is not prudent for me to comment."

A former Air Malta chief engineer, Giordimaina is today designate CEO of the national airline.

On Monday, Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi said a "whistleblower" spoke up on 665 files that had been "put away in an abandoned room". The files had been opened after consumers were caught tampering with their power meters. The Police had been called in, but for some unknown reason no further action had been taken and the cases remained open.

Although a separate matter, the discovery was allegedly made after the government came under fire by the Opposition for opting to initiate a scheme to recuperate back due payments from the tampering of some 1,000 smart meters.

The Opposition insists that consumers who paid Enemalta officials to have their smart meters tampered should be prosecuted. The government is calling on the consumers to come forward with information that may lead investigating officers to capture the masterminds behind the tampering.

In comments to MaltaToday, Tonio Fenech said he was informed that the 665 files had not been hidden away but were 'works in progress'. Reportedly, one case that amounted to hundreds of thousands was taken to court to see whether the case was time-barred.

"The management at Enemalta was very much aware of these cases and they had not been thrown away - at least not under the PN administration. If someone wanted to do a favour, the files would have been burnt," he said, adding the files had been in the office of a senior manager at the state corporation.

A restructuring process within Enemalta in 2012 led the files being moved from one unit to the other: "It was decided that ARMS Ltd should take care of new theft cases that came in. But it is clear that action was taken... it's another matter if attention was not giving to these files by the responsible person following the handover."

He went on to add that the whistleblower should have informed the ministry on who the responsible persons were and why the files had been abandoned, "because that's what a whistleblower does".

"I challenge the minister to hold an independent inquiry and question each and every manager at Enemalta to see what happened to the files," Fenech said, accusing the Energy Minister of irresponsibility.

Fenech also rebutted claims that he had known about the electricity theft but failed to take action: "My argument is very simple: if you ask the finance minister whether everyone was declaring his tax, he will not reply in the positive. This however doesn't mean that no action is being taken to fight tax evasion... but it also doesn't mean that the fight will be won."

He said the same argument would be applied to the theft of electricity, insisting that it was false to say the theft exploded in 2012.

"From the Enemalta financial accounts it is clear that, year after year, losses from theft and the distribution system were on the decrease. It is fallacious to say that Enemalta had not been tackling the matter - the introduction of the smart meters was to serve this purpose."

Fenech said the smart meters were to be connected to a central system that would make it easier for Enemalta to study the analytics and catch out any irregularities. "One should not forget that the Labour opposition had criticised the installation of the smart meters as 'waste of money'," he added.

But under the PN administration, only 44,000 smart meters had been activated and technical issues had delayed the full implementation of the system. Today there are approximately 120,000.

Between the deteriorating financial situation and the oil procurement scandal, the state energy corporation has been in the eye of the storm. Yet, Tonio Fenech claims that political responsibility has already been shouldered.

"The people passed their judgement during the electoral campaign when they elected Labour to government and sent the PN to the Opposition benches. We are carrying the responsibility. But the easiest thing to do is blame it on the politician."

Fenech went on to accuse the Energy Minister of lying following the discovery of the tampered smart meters: "As the internal auditor revealed, the company was presented with three tampered smart meters and it was not the Theft Control Unit that captured the thefts."

In parliament on Wednesday, Konrad Mizzi said that following information received in July, Enemalta officials went on to discover 1,000 smart meters that had been tampered with.