The Danish firm BWSC and Joseph Mizzi have not made available to the National Audit Office the emails they sent each other from 2006 to 2009.
These emails are indispensable to get an inkling of what they did to be awarded the contract for the extension of the Delimara Power Station. BWSC and Mizzi want to hide their tracks and will do all they can not to leave a trace of what they went through to get this contract. The Auditor General in his report admits that he has investigated only the emails that were passed on to him (by myself) and most of them were written and sent in 2005 or before: “However, all available emails were made prior to the tendering process under investigation – no evidence of similar correspondence after the commencement of the process is available.”
The Auditor General states that these 2005 emails show “how certain restricted information seems to have been obtained from Enemalta Corporation.” If Mizzi went through a lot of trouble in 2005, at the pre-tendering stage to obtain restricted information, imagine how he must have double his efforts between 2006 and 2009 to get restricted information during the different phases of the tendering process that put BWSC in pole position to win the Delimara contract.
Mizzi tried to destroy even the evidence for 2005. Towards the end of 2005 he left the local company he worked for and set up his own business, representing exclusively international firms like the Danish company BWSC and the German Lahmeyer International. Before leaving, he deleted all the emails he had sent to BWSC in 2005 regarding the new power plant Enemalta wanted to install as an extension of the Delimara Power Station.
His emails were however recovered from the hard disc of the computer he left on his desk. Mizzi’s emails provide us with a rare view of how he operated behind closed doors to secure the Delimara extension contract for BWSC. Without his 2005 emails, we would not have been able to find out his mode of operation.
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 earlier, 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.”
In fact it is clear that the small bits of information that can be gleaned from Mizzi’s emails are just the tip of the iceberg. Often he prefers to talk by phone, instead of writing about “sensitive” information. For him talking one on one with no witnesses present is even better. This is why he was shocked when the Dane Bent Iversen interrupted his holiday at a hotel in Mellieha in 2005 to meet Enemalta officials about the Delimara Power Station extension.
In February 2005, Bent Iversen also tried to get onto the act and accompanied other Maltese in 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 search how he is doing his business, he might be risking and will drag with him some Government Officials into trouble!!”
Mizzi operates by stealth and is very careful not to leave any fingerprints behind. BWSC were very happy with his work for them because of his easy access to Enemalta officials and top people in local politics. Mizzi told Martin Kok Jensen of BWSC to keep Bent Iversen out of their efforts to obtain the contract: “We do not need to meet Bent anymore, last time I did was on 10th February (2005) and you are aware of this… Your Danish friend was here again yesterday on his own, this should raise lots of doubts.”
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 March 16, 2005 he informed Martin Kok Jensen that “Your main competitors are for sure Wartsila and MAN B&W as engine manufacturers.”
On 21 March 2005, in the afternoon, Martin Kok Jensen congratulated Mizzi about his ability to get them essential information: “Very, very interesting Joseph. Good to have the right intelligence working in 5th gear.”
In the weeks before the official meeting between Enemalta Corporation and BWSC on 29th March 2005, Mizzi was busy using his contacts within Enemalta to obtain information to be used to the advantage of BWSC.
Thirteen days before the meeting Mizzi tells Jensen “Thank you for your information which I discussed with third party and the following is some information I want to relay to you before the meeting of 29th March. Mizzi then went on to give him technical specifications and financial requirements that Enemalta were to include in their tender. At first BWSC asked Mizzi to set up official meeting with Enemalta for the 22nd of March 2005. But then they told him to shift the meeting to the 30th of March: “At that time we will hopefully also have a clear picture of how our competitors have been acting.” More than once Mizzi boasted with BWSC about his good intelligence network within Enemalta.
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. In 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…”
The Auditor General summoned Mizzi three times and confronted him with direct questions about his mode of operation. The Auditor General found Mizzi “evasive, sometimes bordering on non-collaboration, very often citing lack of memory…”
BWSC officials have also been evasive and they too suffer bouts of forgetfulness when asked about how they won this contract. Even Bent Iversen, contacted recently by a Danish journalist to explain his behaviour in Malta in 2005 regarding the Delimara Power Station extension, remained silent.
When the tendering process started in October 2007, BWSC did not even qualify for the bid. Government policy and existing environmental law excluded its diesel plant operating on heavy fuel oil. By the end of November government abandoned its policy of buying gas fired plants, changed the environmental law and in the beginning of January 2008 Enemalta changed the tender specifications enabling the BWSC’s plant to qualify and eventually secure the contract.
Lahmeyer International, also represented by Mizzi in Malta and appointed by Enemalta as an “independent” technical consultant even though it had built three power stations with BWSC, approved BWSC’s emission abatement equipment. Without such an approval BWSC’s bid would have been disqualified.
Mizzi also approached Zaren Vassallo, who funds the PN, for the construction works at Delimara when at the same time Enemalta’s chairman was Alex Tranter who worked for Vassallo. Mizzi had not been bluffing after all in 2005 when he told BWSC that his network of contacts in Malta would deliver them the Delimara Power Station extension contract.
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