Transport Malta set a new record for direct orders in the months before and immediately following the last general elections.
An analysis of new lists of direct orders awarded by the transport regulator between January and June 2022, published in the Government Gazette this week – over a year late – shows numerous irregularities and the skirting of public procurement rules.
While most direct orders were issued under former transport minister Ian Borg’s political remit that lasted until March 2022, a significant number of irregularities also took place on the watch of his replacement, current Transport Minister Aaron Farrugia.
Borg was sidelined to the Foreign Ministry after the last general elections by Prime Minister Robert Abela and was kept at arm’s length from Transport Malta’s big budgets and large tenders.
Two companies given 26 direct orders in two days
Two companies involved in the hiring of human resources for Transport Malta were given a record 13 direct orders each on the same day.
In what must be a unique record, B&A Manpower Company Ltd was tasked with providing clerical services for the transport regulator.
While receiving 24 separate direct orders for the same service in six months, costing taxpayers €525,000, 13 were awarded on the same day on 12 April 2022.
It is unclear whether Finance Minister Clyde Caruana gave the required go-ahead for this gross irregularity.
Set up in 2018, B&A Manpower Ltd is owned by Jean Karl Abela and Roderick Borg and began providing services to Transport Malta as soon as it was incorporated.
Gold Guard Security Serviced Ltd also had a bonanza of direct orders to provide clerical services. A total of 18 direct orders worth €424,000 were issued in six months. Thirteen of those direct orders were awarded the same day – 16 April 16, 2022, which was a Saturday.
The security company based in Rabat, Minister Ian Borg’s electoral district, is owned by Giorgiana Lupu – a Romanian citizen. Her partner is Stephen Ciangura, former MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s one-time bodyguard, who is also involved in other security companies, including Executive Security Services. The latter is also a regular feature on the government’s direct orders list.
BI Ventures – a construction company co-owned by Valerio Camilleri, also known as Il-Hawsla, was given 12 separate direct orders during the same election period to the value of €115,000. Most of the work done through those direct orders was not specified except for work done at the Transport Malta building in Sa Maison.
This is the same building where disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat is occupying an office to conduct his private business off taxpayers’ backs and with the ‘tolerance’ of his successor Prime Minister Robert Abela.
A never-ending list of the usual suspects
The new list of 380 direct orders includes many of the usual suspects awarded tens of thousands of euros in direct orders by the government in recent years.
On the legal services list, Rabat-based lawyer and former Labour candidate Chris Cilia, Parliamentary Secretary Andy Ellul, Lucio Sciriha, Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo’s Gatt Vassallo & Associates and Marouska Debono, who used to work with former Minister Edward Zammit Lewis, feature prominently.
A bonanza of direct orders: A list showing multiple awards to the same company on the same day.
A company that presents a programme on Labour’s ONE TV, D&B Music Ltd, was given €6,000 for “a TV show on One TV”. At the same time, another Labour television presenter, Joseph Chetcuti, was paid €7,000 for “promotion and interviews” by Transport Malta.
V Squared Ltd, a television company co-owned by Rachel Cachia, the wife of former parliamentary secretary Alex Muscat, was paid €13,000 for “scripting and production of videos”.
Gadgets Ltd which produces state-sponsored programmes on TVM, was awarded another €10,000 for a “sustainable mobility promotion”.
PAMA gets direct order for €5,000 for milk
Many other direct orders are raising eyebrows among Transport Malta insiders.
A direct order for €5,084 was awarded to PAMA Supermarket for the purchase of milk.
Former Armed Forces of Malta architect Robert Vella received five direct orders in a single day worth €168,000 for “professional services”.
The same architect had been paid tens of thousands of euros just a year earlier for the construction of the fast-ferry terminal in Valletta. The project had to be started over from scratch after a storm destroyed it.
Labour Party Deputy Leader Daniel Micallef was tasked with “enforcement supervisory services” and was contracted €10,000 by direct order.
General Workers Union was paid more than €500,000 to lease its premises at A3 Towers in Paola to Transport Malta.
Pope Francis also found himself on Transport Malta’s direct orders list as the government agency issued two direct orders worth €10,000 for the supply of “refreshments during the Pope’s visit”.
It is a rob the bank cabinet, and the bank is OUR Bank .
That becomes overtime for their workers for voting labour or else they loose their butter.
Mur ivvota gahan !!
A republic entirely taken over by the mafia.
What happened to Ian Borg since the Court of Appeal judgement about his illegal swimming pool? I haven’t seen his face in the media since then, except in connection with articles about historic scandals in his previous Roads Ministry. Has he removed his illegal swimming pool from his front garden, or is he waiting to become a Prime Minister and then regularise it by decree?
Ian Borg’s Roads Ministry was very generous with taxpayers money.
But Ian Borg himself is not so generous with his own funds.
Despite the Court of Appeal ordering him (jointly with the Planning Authority) to settle the legal costs of the court case about his illegal swimming pool, and although he has been presented with the bill amounting to circa 1,000 Euros (that’s roughly the amount of tax he paid on behalf of an old vulnerable Dingli man to buy 600 squared meters of land off him at the price of Euro 10k) in May this year, Ian Borg has not yet paid his dues. And then there he was telling Russia to pay its war expenses to Ukraine. The political hypocrite.
hadd wara hadd tasal ta kulhadd. One of the pigs in the trough. minn mejtin bil-guh saru miljunarji.
If people are seeing that every day there is a different scandal and yet it does not bother them and still remain with this party in power I am sorry to say there is something really wrong. Either they are daft and do not understand anything, brainwashed, corrupt, or they are filling their pocket so in an egoistic manner they do not care at all about the homeless, the poor and their country.
Greediness, lack of education and poor latheral thinking is what keeps the LP in power, Apart from gaining the confidence and support of many businessmen today (for reasons which go beyond economic growth, progress and development) the LP continues to manipulate the vulnerable with pittance. It continues to manifest itself as the natural home for uneducated families and individuals, as many of them are not ambitious enough to improve the quality of their lives. They are simply ready to settle in at low standards. Unfortunately, most of these vulnerable people see Governments as their only hope and source of maintainment through direct incentives. The handing out of €100 cheques before the general election is one very good example of CORRUPT PRACTICE.
dan gwapp aktar mill-lorrysant. x’gara mill-pool li ghamel bla permess?
Xi hmieg !
Alla hares xi darba jigi xi Gvern u jghid li jrid jgholli t-taxxi taghna biex naghmlu tajjeb ghad-deficit ta’ Malta ahna meta dawn l-egoisti qed jimlew buthom u jigu jitn..ku mil-kumplament ghax mohhom mistrieh. Direct Order ghal ta gewwa!
In-Nazzjonalisti jidher li m’ghandhom’x interess li xi darba jkun fil-Gvern huma u jirtu dan id-dejn ghax kieku jaraw kif iwaqqfu dan kollu.
Serq Sfaccat. Hallellin u Hniezer!
A formal road map for the working of the Government’s Mafia Unit.