OPM direct orders: Band club paid €8,500 'exclusivity rights' for Tribali performance

The National Celebrations Foundation (NCF), falling under the Office of the Prime Minister, paid out the total sum of €12,000 to hire Tribali to play at the 2014 Music and Steel Festival and to pay the Zejtun band club exclusivity rights.

Civil servants from the OPM told the parliamentary public accounts committee that, besides paying Tribali for their performance, the NCF had to pay the Zejtun Beland Band Club €8,500 for “exclusivity rights”.

The festival was held on 30 March and the Beland Band Club was scheduled to host its annual Beland Music Festival six weeks later. Since Tribali had been performing at the Beland festival for eight years, the band club argued that they would lose out on audience because people would have already seen Tribali performing at the Music and Steel Festival.

In fact, the NAO found a financial contribution of €8,500 was made to the band club, towards the exclusivity release of Tribali. This contribution was paid in addition to the fee paid to the musical band for their performance in the same concert. Approval was sought and obtained.
What concerned the NAO was that no written agreement existed between Tribali and the Beland band club but only a verbal agreement that had been in place for eight years, as detailed through an exchange of correspondence.

“The NCF did not want to cause problems between Tribali and Beland,” a civil servant told PAC members.

The NCF was set up by the Prime Minister - who hand-picked former Bondiplus presenter Lou Bondì as his consultant on national celebrations - to assist with the festivities marking four historical anniversaries for 2014: the 50th anniversary of Malta’s Independence, the 40th since Malta became a Republic, the 35th anniversary of Freedom Day and 10 years since Malta’s accession to the European Union.

In its report, the National Audit Office found six instances [a sample] where the NCF resorted to the finance ministry for issuance of  €432,374 in direct orders. In three of the cases, the NCF obtained ministry approval, but in the others an expression of interest was published – all of which were awarded to the same service provider, being the only bidder in two out of the three EOIs, totalling €206,500.
Each EOI was preceded and followed by an approval for a direct order, approval of which was granted just a few days before the events in question.

Representatives from the OPM insisted that most of the festivities had been organized in a limited timeframe as proposals kept coming in at the last minute.

“There was little time to issue expression of interests and they had to go for direct orders,” one official said.

Reportedly, one of the issues that arose that required direct orders were musicians’ own requests for specific equipment. At the same time, a last-minute decision which saw Prince William coming to Malta instead of the Duchess of Cambridge for the 50th anniversary of Malta’s Independence required changes to the programme and activities increased. This resulted in further direct orders being issued.

Deputy auditor general Charles Deguara argued that procurement regulations existed to ensure the best use of taxpayers’ money. However, he added, this didn’t mean that direct orders could not be issued.

“Let’s be real and understand that certain events would require direct orders,” he cautioned at one point. The concern, the NAO added, was on whether direct orders were still the exception or had now become the norm.

Little came out of the PAC meeting, but chairman Tonio Fenech and NAO members agreed that regulations needed updating. In their work, auditors are forced to strictly follow certain procedures, even though an issue might have already been covered. One such example was that of fuel for OPM cars.

The NAO system dictates that auditors must check the vehicles’ logbooks in their analysis of fuel. At the same time, the OPM has a fleet management system which already includes logbook details. The system is moreover supervised by the Ministry for Finance and includes systems whereby it is notified when a particular car exceeds the amount of fuel it should be consuming.

In its report on the OPM, the NAO even delved into an overcharge of €18 for photocopying services.

Another issue was that related to a 2005 laptop after this wasn’t cancelled from the list and still appeared in the inventory database.

Fenech commented that “certain items” should not be included in the NAO report as they might cast a shadow on the in-depth work carried out by the same Office. “The 2005 laptop would be in a museum right now,” he quipped.

Villa Francia

An audit of Villa Francia has yet to be carried out and principal permanent secretary Mario Cutajar confirmed that the inventory was currently being updated. The last update was done in 2011.

Asked why the audit hadn’t yet been carried out Auditor General Anthony Mifsud explained that the OPM had been busy organising the Valletta Summit and CHOGM when the request was made.

“They offered to accompany us to tour the place on the weekends but when we saw the amount of work they had in view of the summits we decided to postpone it,” Mifsud said.

The NAO report auditing the 2014 public accounts was carried out last year and published in December.