NAO's indictment of Enemalta

These are the sort of minutes that were kept between 2008 and 2011 by Enemalta's Fuel Procurement Committee.   Often minutes were not kept at all and there is clear evidence of gross lack of governance in the procurement process.

Here is a quote from NAO's covering letter to their extensive report:

NAO’s concerns relating to the operations of the FPC intensify with respect to meetings held in 2008 and 2009. Corresponding FPC meeting minutes reviewed by NAO lacked the most rudimentary level of detail and bore no information relating to meeting discussions and decisions taken. Besides being handwritten and mostly undecipherable, these minutes also lacked a basic record of Committee members present.

The above-discussed implications associated with the systems of poor record-keeping and documentation that characterise and pervade the operations of the FPC prior to May 2011 rendered it impossible for the NAO to effectively audit the decision-making process employed by the Committee in adjudicated tender bids received and evaluated. The implications of such severe limitations in the availability of records documenting the FPC’s decision-making process are brought to the fore in those instances when the Committee awarded tenders to bidders who (based on severely limited information at the NAO’s disposal) did not submit the most favourable offer.

A condemnation stronger than this is hard to imagine.   It is also hard to imagine why the Minister has not immediately called in the police to investigate all those who were involved in this non-system which the NAO defines as an 'affront to the principles of good governance'

Strange that the person who was given a hurried presidential pardon during the election campaign and who it results was a main beneficiary from this affront to the principles of good governance, has not disclosed anything about this period and still keeps all benefits even though the pardon was conditional on telling the whole truth.

Yet whilst the authors of this brouhaha remain unchecked and would not even a comment in self defence to the media, the police are taking criminal actions about events which happened more than a decade ago, and which by comparison are minuscule  probably prescript and where the evidence is solely what was disclosed by the person who is clearly being very economical with the truth, presidential pardon and all.