Evarist Bartolo | Sunday, 14 June 2009

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Insiders and friends – how BWSC got the Delimara tender

The Danish company BWSC – the selected bidder for the new power station at Delimara – was in pole position when the pre-tendering process started four years ago, way back in 2005. BWSC had intensive and informal contacts with top Enemalta officials months before the formal process started. The contacts were through a Maltese intermediary who cultivated and met top officials at Enemalta, who provided him with a lot of inside information that gave BWSC a strategic advantage over other bidders.
This Danish company also used its Maltese intermediary to hold unofficial meetings with persons on Malta who could influence the decisions of Enemalta in its favour. On the morning of 11 May 2005, the Maltese intermediary contacted Anders Langhorn of BWSC, to inform him that “we need to tap another source higher up in the political hierarchy…,” and asked him to prepare a technical brief to convince Enemalta what power generating plant to go for.
In February 2005, a certain Bent Iversen also tried to get onto the act and came to Malta, and accompanied other Maltese to an unofficial meeting with Enemalta officials. The Maltese intermediary contacted Martin Kok Jensen of BWSC, and very alarmed told him: “He went direct to Enemalta with a Maltese agent. I have to find out how he is doing his business, he might be risking and will drag with him some government officials into trouble.”
The Maltese intermediary took all the necessary steps to get Bent Iversen and other Maltese out of the way, to ensure that he strikes the deal for BWSC with Enemalta and win the bid for the new power station. BWSC were very happy with their intermediary and congratulated him on the information he was providing them: “Good to have the right intelligence working in fifth gear.”
His unofficial meetings with Enemalta officials continued and he acquired valuable information for BWSC, informing them about their competitors for the bid even before the formal pre-tendering process started. In the afternoon of 16 March, 2005 he informed Martin Kok Jensen: “your main competitors are surely Wartsila and MAN B&W as engine manufacturers.”
While supplying BWSC with inside information from his sources within Enemalta to help them prepare their bid, the local intermediary also asked for technical information from BWSC to persuade Enemalta decision-makers to issue and choose specifications that would be to the advantage of the bid submitted by BWSC. On the 14th March 2005 he told Martin Kok Jensen: “Before I go to the meeting later on this week I need some ammunition to arm myself.” Later on in March 2005 the intermediary had frequent official meetings “with third parties” and obtained for BWSC the technical details about the generating plant that eventually were going to be in the tender.
In June 2005, BWSC was actively considering inviting Enemalta officials to visit power stations it had installed on the islands of Guernsey and Crete, and the intermediary was asked to say who should be invited and how the invitation should be worded. These invitations never materialised as there was no need for the visits. The formal pre-tendering process, including the Request for Interest, the Request for Proposal and the Invitation to Tender started in October 2005. By then BWSC was already well placed to submit its successful bid for the new power station.
In April 2009, BWSC was awarded the €200 million contract for the extension of the Delimara power plant, amid a controversy over alleged irregularities during the adjudicating process. A rival bidder, the Israeli company Ido Hutney Projekt/Bateman Energies BV, sent a letter to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi last March, complaining that the adjudicating process was flawed. The Israeli company had failed to contest the decision through the public contracts appeal mechanism.
In its electoral programme, the PN promises (Proposal 187) that a Gonzi government would “reduce harmful emissions in the air, land and sea.” Proposal 188 commits the Gonzi government to practice green public procurement policies “and to discriminate positively in favour of those companies that offer products and solutions that are environmentally superior.”
In its evaluation of the bid by BWSC for a power station that works on both heavy fuel oil (HFO) and gas oil which can be converted to natural gas firing for the cost of over €27 million, the February 2009 Report by the Adjudicating Committee states: “Bidders proposing the diesel engine combined cycle plants indicated that a continuous supply of a combined total of around 60 tons of reagents and lubricating oil per day is required. In addition, between 30 and 50 tons per day of hazardous waste will be generated by the exhaust emission abatement equipment. The waste is considered hazardous due to the presence of heavy metals originating from the fuel. This waste is similar in nature to the waste produced by the existing HFO fired boilers. This waste most probably will have to be exported, although its use as a bulking out additive in mass concrete is being investigated. All this would require a continuously operating logistics system to handle these materials.”

Evarist Bartolo is a PL member of parliament and a former education minister

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