Tonio flies with big business, Debono accuses him of ‘conflict’
Finance minister Tonio Fenech was yesterday queried about a “conflict of interest” by a Nationalist MP, during a rowdy five-hour meeting of the Nationalist parliamentary group at Villa Preziosi in Lija.
Backbencher Franco Debono dropped a bombshell when he challenged Fenech about his alleged conflict in accepting to watch a sports event abroad with a businessman.
MaltaToday can confirm that the minister, an avid Arsenal fan, went abroad with businessman Joe Gasan, aboard the private jet owned by the Tumas Group, to watch the Gunners play in London.
Debono’s claim assumes particular relevance in the light of Fenech’s proposed changes to the Lotteries and Other Games bill, which have been interpreted as an attempt to divert more business to the casino sector, in which the Tumas Group is a leading player.
The same Group is currently also bidding for the 10-year lease of the Dragonara Casino in St Julian’s.
“Yes, in March I travelled with Joe Gasan by private jet, upon his insistence to watch Arsenal play,” Fenech told MaltaToday yesterday.
The finance minister also said he had asked the prime minister whether it was any problem for him to travel with Gasan. “The PM said that as long as it was exclusively for football, there should be no problem.”
Fenech also revealed that in April 2009, he travelled with Tumas Group chairman George Fenech in his private jet, to the location where the jet receives maintenance. “It was an opportunity to convince this company to invest in Malta,” the minister told MaltaToday.
But in his reaction to Franco Debono during the parliamentary meeting, an irate Fenech protested that there were people who “wanted to throw mud” at him.
He told MPs that at the time, in March, he was “not thinkng about the gaming law.”
Yesterday’s meeting between Nationalist ministers and the PN backbench also saw MP Robert Arrigo walking out of the meeting, in protest at comments by Beppe Fenech Adami who told the MP he should have never appeared on Bondiplus last Monday and spoke as he did.
The programme featured Arrigo, and MPs Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Franco Debono, who openly vented their concerns about the state of the Nationalist government.
Reacting to Fenech Adami, Arrigo said nobody told him where to appear and what to say. But Fenech Adami insisted: “You pleased Labour and degraded the Prime Minister” (paxxejtu lil tal-labour u baxxejtu lill-Prim Ministru).
It was here that Arrigo stormed out of the meeting, while the Prime Minister looked on. It took a number of fellow MPs to convince Arrigo to come back into the room, while inside, MPs chided Fenech Adami for his criticism.
On his part, Pullicino Orlando stressed that the Bondiplus edition, which focused on the three backbenchers and their ministerial ambitions, was clearly “instigated” by “acquaintances”. The MP said he accepted the invitation to speak the truth to the electorate.
Arrigo made it clear that it was the very first time he was invited on a PBS programme, and that not even party stations Net TV or Radio 101 had ever invited him to a programme.
The stormy meeting saw the PN backbenchers in a relatively united front against any legislation that could be enacted unilaterally by any minister, without seeking any parliamentary discussion.
The group also unanimously decided to put off debate in parliament on the Delimara extension until a report requested by the Public Accounts Committee is submitted. The debate was requested by the Opposition, in a motion that hits out at the way the winning tender was selected.
The MPs also spent most of their time discussing the amendments to the gaming law. Social policy minister John Dalli and MPs Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Franco Debono came out as the most vociferous over the fact that government was not centralising the data obtained from gaming halls around the island.
Instead, various gaming inspectors were roving around the different gaming halls to collect the data from machines. Fenech said that it would cost too much money and the inspectors could make a good job by inspecting the machines.
When challenged to say how much the centralised system would cost, he said it would cost an approximate $3 million. The ensuing debate ended with Fenech accepting to invest in a centralised data collection system that would see all gaming machines linked to a phone-line and register all bets and wins at the Gaming Authority.
Other interventions were made by Jean-Pierre Farrugia, Censu Galea, Ninu Zammit, and Jesmond Mugliett.
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