If you’re looking for scandals, corruption, bribes, cover-ups, absenteeism, crass cronyism, squandering of public funds and deliberate inefficiencies all under one roof, there is no better place to look than at the Transport Authority (ADT).
From its head offices in Sa Maison down to the remotest bus shelter, stories have never been in short supply, at times going as far up as the transport minister himself.
The massive bribery that was going on at the driving exams department, exposed by this newspaper in May 2006 was only the tip of the iceberg. Within weeks, corruption cases were coming out like never before, although long before that the same authority was already the cause of the rise and fall of many a minister targeted by the Opposition: from Michael Frendo implicated by Labour in the bus ticketing scandal, moving on to Censu Galea’s embarrassing recorded conversations about his inability to control the authority, to Jesmond Mugliett’s direct intervention to protect corrupt canvassers employed therein.
Over the years, ADT has become a hive of hard-line Nationalists with dubious pasts, some from the PN’s legendary tal-gakketta blu, and others with influential friends helping them keep their skeletons locked firmly in their closets.
The few whistleblowers there have always been ridiculed, shunned and marginalised: hence the massive disgruntlement and countless leaks, and the month of May has turned into an uncannily notorious time for ADT.
In this month two years ago, MaltaToday revealed that the authority had received serious reports of bribery implicating its driving examiners, a motoring school and one of the canvassers of former minister Jesmond Mugliett, forcing the minister to launch an inquiry and the police to press charges against the indicted officers.
The inquiry confirmed this newspaper’s investigations, which had also exposed how the authority covered up and protected a corrupt and alcoholic driving examiner who had run over the elderly father of Labour MP Joseph Cuschieri while driving with three times the permitted alcohol levels.
The ADT’s chief executive at the time, Gianfranco Selvaggi, had only transferred Nicolai Magrin within the authority, instead of suspending him and submitting him to disciplinary procedures. The police themselves had protected Magrin, failing to press charges against him.
The conclusions of the inquiry into the Transport Authority’s bribery scandal reveal that “had not the article on the traffic accident of 29 April 2006 in which Mr Nicolai Magrin was involved appeared in the MaltaToday of 18 June 2006, it might well have transpired that this traffic accident would have gone unprosecuted.”
The board of inquiry also confirmed that police filed their charges against him only a day after MaltaToday made the story public – more than a month and a half since the accident.
Slamming the authority’s management, the board said it couldn’t “but note with regret that the management seems to have failed to take the decisive appropriate action”.
The inquiry also revealed shocking management malpractices. While Mugliett had claimed he was never aware of specific cases of bribery, it emerged that Selvaggi and successive chairmen only inquired internally about allegations that kept resurfacing at least since May 2005, without ever reporting them to the police.
And despite the ongoing serious allegations, driving examiners and their managers were still effectively allowed to continue with their abuses in positions of responsibility and trust before the corruption cases came out in public.
The inquiry slams the authority and questions why “nothing of substance materialised at ADT in the period between October 2005 and April 2006 despite the fact that both the chief executive and the administration manager of the technical unit were aware of the strong rumours of corrupt practices.” Police officers confirmed that until May 2006 they were never approached by ADT to investigate any alleged corruption cases.
Problems in the driving examinations department go back to the recruitment of the examiners in 2004, with the launch of the new driving test. The inquiry found only two personal assessments of the five recruited persons, and says it was doubtful whether their training was sufficient to meet standard requirements of legality, road safety and security.
In fact, Magrin, son of Management Enforcement Officer Alfred Magrin, was then already facing serious drug abuse problems – a fact totally ignored by the authority upon his recruitment.
Even worse, the examiners were allowed to continue with their abusive practices thanks to the easy access they had to the administration offices.
“The administration was where the receipt of applications for tests was received and where the subsequent scheduling of candidates was done,” the inquiry says. “The investigations proved that particular candidates or motoring schools/instructors were being slotted on certain dates to coincide with the presence of specific driving examiners who would be conducting the tests.”
In May last year, the authority was under yet another investigation and even more of its officials were being arraigned in court over new corruption charges within its licensing department.
The new case came to light following an internal audit that uncovered “serious discrepancies” while tallying names of people who attended the theory examination before their practical driving test.
The audit pointed out a number of irregularities, leaving no option for Selvaggi to refer the case to the police. Selvaggi submitted his resignation a few days later, implicating Mugliett in a never-ending saga by alleging direct ministerial interference, when the minister tried to keep one of the convicted examiners and his former canvasser employed with the authority pending a Presidential pardon.
Before Selvaggi, in December 2004, then chief executive Mario Falzon was sacked after he was caught promoting an employee illegally in a notorious case of favouritism, although both the authority and the minister had refused to make details of the irregularity public.
In 2005, a MaltaToday investigation revealed how the Lm1.1 million “state of the art” bus ticketing system installed in 2003 had over 2,000 faults – explaining why the system never took off.
At an average of more than four faults a day, 388 buses out of 500 were affected at least once, with the system installed and maintained by Alberta Fire Detection and Alarm Systems registering daily breakdowns, memory loss and systematic errors that were forcing bus drivers to revert to the old manual ticket selling system.

Gatt’s guts
Now there is Austin Gatt at the helm, under the new GonziPN administration. His predecessor was one of the former ministers informed by Gonzi via SMS that he would not be part of the new Cabinet, after a whole career offering Labour all sorts of opportunities to attack him: from claims of personal and business interests conflicting with his ministerial work, to Selvaggi’s damning attacks in his last days at ADT.
The bullish minister has no time for that kind of nonsense. Gatt made a name for himself over the disaster he left at PBS, but at the same time he was also intolerant of any hint of irregularity there and elsewhere.
It is immediately clear Gatt will have none of the stench that overwhelms the authority’s offices. Contrast his attitude towards corruption claims with that of his predecessor, and it gives a picture of the changes he wants to bring with him.
Only last week, he ordered the new ADT chairman, Simon Vella, to appoint an independent board to investigate allegations of abuse in the award of licences for driving instructors.
The minister was approached by a person who was informed beforehand she did not need to take an exam for her instructors’ licence because it was made clear she would not pass the exam anyway for reasons other than merit or qualifications.
This marks an unprecedented approach towards corruption claims at the transport authority after years of cover-ups and deafening silences. At least, it shows Gatt wants to come clean from the start whenever faced with such claims. How he will act on the conclusions of the investigation remains to be seen.
“The specific case currently under review concerns the licensing of driving instructors,” his spokesman, Emanuel Delia, told MaltaToday. “In any case, the Minister asked, within days of his recent appointment, ADT management to supply him with a detailed management survey of all its operations. This was not a procedure adopted specifically for ADT but it is a process the Ministry adopted with all entities.”
Ultimately, Gatt knows the people at ADT very well: he knows their strong points and their weaknesses, some of them going as far back as the turbulent 1980s when they militated on the PN’s frontline.
About ADT being a hive of nepotism, Delia says it is a vague categorisation.
“However,” he points out, “I can assure you that it is this ministry’s view that there is no such thing as an ‘untouchable’. All employees owe to the public an efficient, transparent service which is worth what it costs. That service must be delivered with the highest level of integrity at all times and no compromises with that principle are tolerated of anyone.
Compromises with the highest ethical standard will not be made now or at any time in the future. Any allegation or suggestion of malpractice or corruption will be investigated immediately and action will be taken against those who have been found to have betrayed the public’s trust.”
The minister promises improving audit trails, transparency and accountability through Information and Communication Technology – in itself an important tool to reduce opportunities for irregularity and corruption.
“We are currently working on a program of changes in the operations at the Licence and Testing Department,” Delia added. “The approach is to reduce the burden of bureaucracy on customers (private citizens and business clients), improving efficiency and eliminating employee discretion which is a gateway to corruption.
“In doing this all our initiatives are, above every other consideration, inspired by a strong sense of ethics in public service. The public is right to expect from the Minister himself the highest degree of integrity and accountability, and it is right for the Minister to be obliged to submit himself to the scrutiny of Parliament. In turn the Minister is right to expect from all officials working within his department the same sense of integrity and accountability. This message has been delivered loudly and clearly to all directors and management of ADT by the Minister himself. Those who are not ready to fit into this mode of doing Government business need to re-consider their position at ADT.”
Delia spoke of technical and professional competence at the authority that was a valuable asset, but there was also the need to strengthen management effectiveness and to make ADT more transparent and customer-oriented.
“By way of example it was immediately evident that management of road building and maintenance was very weak and needed concentrated leadership at Board level. The weakness is reflected ultimately in the experience of motorists and pedestrians on our roads. This was the motivation for the creation of the Board directly responsible for roads.
“On a more micro-level there were several points that clearly could no longer be tolerated and needed immediate Ministerial direction. The Authority had all but abandoned its regulatory role on road works conducted by Local Councils. The fact that contractors were entrusted with testing their own work before handing it over was obviously part of the explanation for shoddy road markings, patching and road works. That too needed immediate rectifying. There are, no doubt, other more complex problems that need more complex solutions.”