Shiv Nair takes on Azzopardi over Ched Evans tweet

The British business consultant Shiv Nair, much maligned by the Nationalist Party for his blacklisting by the World Bank and having assisted the Labour government, has taken exception to a strong comment by MP Jason Azzopardi.

Nair, first named by MaltaToday as a government consultant on energy, has complained at being name-dropped by the shadow home affairs minister in a tweet on the Ched Evans case.

Azzopardi was reacting to Joseph Muscat’s tweet on calling on Hibernians FC to think twice before signing the convicted rapist, a former Sheffield United striker who served two and a half years of a five-year prison sentence.

Issa l-PM jinkwieta ghad-dehra ta' Malta? Nesa li Shiv Nair u l-bejgh tac-cittadinanza rridikolawna mad-dinja?... http://t.co/JJaMqpchFL

— Jason Azzopardi (@AzzopardiJason) January 3, 2015

In his tweet, Azzopardi played down Muscat’s umbrage by stating that “Nair and the sale of citizenship had made a mockery of Malta the world over.”

But Nair is having none of that, saying that while having the greatest respect for Azzopardi as a “credible and intelligent politician” he was “extremely surprised by his correlating [him] to a convicted rapist.”

“In Malta, a country that I consider my home, where I live with my family and from where I run my businesses, I am attacked day in and day out by people like Jason Azzopardi who appear to feel that only they have the wherewithal to bring development to this country,” Nair wrote in to MaltaToday.

“By equating my appointment as a Malta Enterprise consultant with the signing of a convicted rapist, Dr Azzopardi is not only insulting a vast majority of his constituents by trivialising rape and violence against women, but also showing how low he is willing to stoop in order to score cheap political points,” Nair said.

Nair was appointed as a trade envoy with Malta Enterprise in 2013, accompanying energy minister Konrad Mizzi in a meeting with his Qatari counterpart. His contract of employment has never been publicised and a Freedom of Information request by MaltaToday is pending an appeal before the Information and Data Protection appeals tribunal.

Nair made a direct reference to Azzopardi’s claim that Evans, who cannot leave the UK while still on parole, should be given a second chance by calling on the MP to stay true to his belief. “Azzopardi claims the footballer has repaid his debt to society… he is however happy to attack Dr Muscat for authorising my appointment even though the events that I was accused of took place 17 years ago. Surely what is good for the goose is good for the gander?”

Nair was accused by the World Bank of operating a cartel with other companies on bank-funded projects – an accusation he says was never tested in a court of law.

In 2000 he was permanently debarred by the World Bank for engaging “in corrupt practices as defined by the Bank’s Consultants’ Guidelines”, a fact that Muscat has claimed he was unaware of. The prime minister has declared that Nair, reportedly paid a total of €6,000 for his envoy’s role, played an important role in setting up a very high-level meeting between Konrad Mizzi and Qatar government officials.

Nair’s career has been spent working with governments in Africa, the former Soviet Union states, and Latin America, as well as with a host of Chinese government-owned corporations CAMCE, CCECC, Sinopec, China Railways, CETC, China Shipbuilding and Sinoma.