Konrad Mizzi defies Public Accounts Committee’s summons, refuses to testify

Disgraced former Minister Konrad Mizzi said today on Facebook that he will not appear before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee probing the controversial Electrogas project. He had been due to appear before the committee later today.

The investigation was triggered as the scandal-ridden gas-fired power station project became mired in allegations of massive corruption and money laundering involving Mizzi himself, as well as accused financial criminal and former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri.

Mizzi was exposed as having set up a secret Panama company in 2013, just days after the Labour Party won the general elections that year, by assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. That company, Hearneville Inc., was later revealed by international media reports, as well as a report by the FIAU, to have been set up to receive kickbacks from Electrogas shareholder Yorgen Fenech.

Caruana Galizia concurrently outed Schembri’s own secret Panama company, Tilgate Inc, also later shown to have been set up to receive large sums of money from Fenech’s Dubai company, 17 Black.

“Today I chose not to participate in the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee,” Mizzi wrote in a “statement” on the social media site this morning, claiming the parliamentary investigation is “nothing more than a partisan political exercise pushed by the Nationalist Party.”

Mizzi has been linked to a slew of major scandals over the past eight years: apart from his roles in the power station and related SOCAR gas supply rackets, he was closely associated with the Vitals hospital deal as well as the Montenegro windfarm scandal.

He has consistently failed to answer questions about his involvement in the project. When summoned to give evidence to the public inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s assassination in October 2017 – which has been linked directly with the corruption behind the Electrogas deal – he refused to respond to 100 questions that were put to him, instead making a statement claiming he never took “kickbacks or rewards”.

Mizzi was forced to resign his ministerial position over his connections to the corrupt deals in 2019, and was later ousted from the Labour Party parliamentary group after reports showing the extent of his involvement in the Montenegro windfarm scandal sparked public outrage.