Konrad Mizzi’s preferred consultancy firm misses a Beat

Beat Ltd, a boutique management consultancy firm that was given a stream of direct orders by the Labour Party in government, has lost one of its founding members as veteran businessman Philip Tabone pulled out of the company just a few weeks after Konrad Mizzi was kicked out of the Labour parliamentary group.

In 2015, at the peak of Mizzi’s short-lived political career, Tabone, a Sliema-based businessman involved mainly in the importation of construction material, had set up the consultancy firm with David Galea, with various government ministries and agencies as their main clients.

Mizzi was shown the door of the Labour Party in June 2020, and Tabone quickly made sure to transfer all his 10,000 shares in Beat Ltd to Galea, making sure that all his connections to the company were severed.

While Tabone was never involved in any sort of consultancy during his long career, the move had raised eyebrows among the business community as Tabone’s son, Anthony, was at the time the CEO of Smart City and had become very close to former health and energy minister Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the chief of staff of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat.

Anthony Tabone was appointed Malta’s consul in Dubai during the PN administration. While all other appointees in similar roles were immediately pushed out of their position following the change of administration, he was the exception, keeping his position and accompanying various government ministers to Dubai, particularly former ministers Mizzi and Chris Cardona.

An analysis carried out by The Shift had found that between 2013 and 2019, Galea and Beat Ltd were given more than 35 lucrative direct orders, with a total value of over €1 million paid through taxpayers’ funds.

The various ‘jobs’ included the controversial projects steered by the Muscat-Mizzi-Schembri triumvirate, including the tainted hospitals deal, the ITS land sale and the Electrogas project.

During the same month that Beat Ltd was set up, in November 2015, it was awarded a lucrative direct order by Mizzi on a multi-million euro plan to relocate the Institute of Tourism Studies to Smart City where Anthony Tabone was CEO.

The project has never seen the light of day.

The name of Galea, a childhood friend of Mizzi, is being frequently mentioned during the ongoing grilling of the former minister by the Public Accounts Committee.

During the last session, Mizzi could not tell the committee how he came to know Galea and why he was selected to conduct the evaluation process in relation to the tainted power plant project. Mizzi said that he did not know who chose him.