665 cases of confirmed electricity thefts ‘locked away in abandoned room’

An Enemalta employee blew the whistle on 665 cases of confirmed electricity theft that were "locked away in an abandoned room" in the billing department. The files, found in four boxes, date between 2006 and 2011 and all had been the subject of police investigations confirming the theft.

A querela had all also been lodged. It is estimated the thefts amount to over €2 million, with some of the individual cases running into hundreds of thousands.

MaltaToday is informed that at least one case amounted to €101,000 and hotels, including established ones, were among these cases.

Enemalta said 10% of the files were commercial.

Addressing the press, Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi said the whistleblower - who works in a different section - approached government officials last week to reveal the scandal.

"The shocking part is not that the theft occurred, because the consumers had been caught, their tampered meters changed and police brought in who confirmed the tampering. The shocking part is that these files were shelved and not a cent recovered," he said.

Reiterating his disbelief, Mizzi said he found it hard to believe that nothing was done despite Enemalta opening theft files. It is understood that the 665 cases were a portion of theft cases which Enemalta investigated over the years and which monies it recovered.

"This is criminal, obscene. Why were these particular files locked away? This is the 'zero tolerance' against corruption the PN talks about. This is the pardon that was carried out by the previous administration," he said.

Turning his attention to former finance minister Tonio Fenech, previously responsible of Enemalta, Mizzi said he now "understood" why the PN was "hiding" Fenech: "He should disappear from the political scene."

Enemalta will now be holding an internal investigation to establish why the files had not been processed and whether there had been any ulterior motives. The state corporation was now seeking legal advice to determine the way forward on how to recuperate the money. Checkups include seeing whether some of the cases were prescribed by law.

Information provided by Enemalta shows that the majority of files, 186 were "put away", in 2011. Files located to date show the files split as follows: 32 in 2005, 22 in 2006, 73 in 2007, 91 in 2008, 121 in 2009 and 140 in 2011.

In a statement, the PN said the Opposition was against any form of theft and the necessary steps should be taken to ensure that Enemalta recovers the monies.

It added that Enemalta had passed on the cases to the police to investigate the matter, "contrary to what the government did with the 1,000 tampered smart meters".

The PN also said that Mizzi is now expected to investigate why the Police had not proceeded with its investigation involving the 665 files.

"We expect the minister to stop playing the partisan political game and take action against the cases of thefts and bribery."