Evarist Bartolo | Sunday, 26 July 2009

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Enemalta’s heaven does not exist

In one of his poems DH Lawrence writes of a man “who builds around himself a wall / paints it blue / and thinks he is heaven”. Like this man, Enemalta has been insulating itself from the reality of hard facts and painting its press releases blue and thinking it is in earthly paradise before the fall and before man became corrupt.
Five days ago Enemalta issued a press release to try and dispel all doubts cast on the tendering process for the new power station at Delimara. Enemalta stated that it is ridiculous to suggest that the chosen bidder – the Danish company BWSC – had advance information that helped it win the tender as Enemalta had publicly declared since 2001 that there was a need for a new 114MW power station as an extension to Delimara power station.
Enemalta also said that between 2004 and 2005 it started exploring different options for the new power station. It insisted that it was normal to meet the companies interested in tendering for the power station to see what technology was on offer and whether it was adequate for Malta’s needs.
At the beginning of 2006 Enemalta published a ‘Request for Information’ (RFI). Enemalta said that meetings took place with those companies that were interested. Enemalta went on to explain that in November 2006 it published a Request for Proposals. Six companies submitted their proposals. Enemalta said that “At this stage, only meetings established as part of the official tendering process were allowed to take place.”
In 2007 Enemalta invited companies to submit their offer after the publication of a document with technical specifications. This process was completed by May 2009. Enemalta stressed that “No one had any advance confidential information as all information was in the public domain and so no bidder was placed in a pole position to win the tender. The specifications were not designed to favour any particular bidder.”
Regarding the role of one of its ex-employees and the intensive lobbying he did to win the tender for BWSC, Enemalta said that his emails published in newspapers like MaltaToday refer to his contacts between himself and BWSC. “In no stage was there any official of the corporation involved in those emails or in those contacts.”
The only problem with Enemalta’s version of events is that if you submit it to a reality check you find that it leaves out all the facts that disturb its heaven where the tendering process for the new power station was pure and untainted. But let us venture out of Enemalta’s heaven and into the real world and meet Joseph Mizzi, who built strong links with BWSC from January 2005 boasting that his contacts at Enemalta where he had worked for 24 years were crucial for obtaining information and exerting influence to secure the tender for BWSC..
Before choosing to work for BWSC on this tender, Mizzi tried to involve Mitsubishi Corporation. On January 20, 2005 he told Mr Masaki Ishikawa: “We are already doing things for you by informing Mitsubishi about the launching of the project and transferring information which others do not have yet.” Two days before Mizzi gave Ishikawa a detailed account of the technical specifications Enemalta were going to be looking for. When Ishikawa asked him for more details, Mizzi replied: “I am sure you will appreciate that such delicate matters referred to in your email cannot be documented and discussed in correspondence.”
Once he decided to work for BWSC, Mizzi showed the same commitment to use what he refers to as “his intelligence network” within Enemalta that enabled him to obtain advance information, influence technical decisions and also be informed on BWSC’s rivals. He did all this work discreetly. In fact when Bent Iversen came to Malta in February 10, 2005 he told BWSC that he was shocked by his method of operation. He told Martin Kok Jensen: “He went direct to Enemalta with a Maltese agent, I have to search how he is doing his business, he might be risking and will drag with him some Government Officials into trouble!!” Iversen reappeared in Malta on 17th March 2005. Enemalta’s contacts informed Mizzi about this and the day after he told Jensen: “Your Danish friend was here again yesterday on his own, this should raise lots of doubts.” BWSC congratulated Mizzi: “Very, very interesting Joseph. Good to have the right intelligence working in 5th gear…”
Mizzi was definitely more discreet than Bent Iversen in how he used his contacts at Enemalta. In March 2005, 19 days before the official meeting between BWSC and Enemalta, Mizzi arranged for Martin Kok Jensen to come to Malta and meet his Enemalta contacts. These confidential meetings obviously did not take place at the offices of Enemalta where the other meetings with the other bidders were taking place. Meetings like these, of which there would be regularly for the whole tendering and adjudicating process between 2005 and 2009, took place outside the framework of the formal meetings set up by Enemalta.
BWSC were very impressed with the work Mizzi did for them and they saw him as crucial to win the contract. They considered him very well connected, both within Enemalta and the local political network. They constantly supplied him with information for his contacts referred to as “third persons” and which he referred to as “third party” whom he contacted regularly in unofficial discussions outside Enemalta. These contacts kept him informed in how the tendering process was going and also informed him what BWSC’s rivals were doing.
For example, at one point a rival invited Mr Ronnie Vella, Head of Electricity Section at Enemalta, to visit Guernsey and see for himself a power station it built on the island. Mizzi’s contacts within Enemalta informed him about this and he immediately got in touch with BWSC to extend a similar invitation to Vella to visit Crete where BWSC had just completed a new power station. On June 15, 2005 he tells Jensen of BWSC: “It seems at a glance that your invitation to Mr Vella had an effect on his visit to Guernsey. They are still assessing both invitations as to whether attend or cancel both. We put him in a fix!! This means that our information about his visit was reliable.”
To stress that his informers at Enemalta did not include Mr Vella he told Jensen: “I had a whole day with Mr Vella last week at Enemalta and he never mentioned anything to me about the invitation.” When urging BWSC to invite Mr Vella, Mizzi had told them: “If I were you I would do it (send the invitation) to Mr Vella only and cc to others and he will decide whom to take with him like he will be doing in Guernsey, this is what I was told!!! Lets not interfere in his business, I know his character. Lets see if we can expose his face by taking off the mask.”
Since February 2005 Mizzi has shown himself very confident that BWSC would clinch the deal. He persuaded BWSC that he had the right connections in Enemalta and the local political network to deliver and he did. Enemalta’s statement has very little to do with the real world, and quite hilarious especially when it states: “In no stage was there any official of the corporation involved in those emails or in those contacts.”

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