A secret energy agreement being revealed for the first time shows that the Maltese government gave what is effectively an unconditional guarantee to SOCAR Trading that it would step in to cover any of Electrogas’ debts,
The Shift reports.
The Shift has previously revealed it was former Minister Konrad Mizzi who personally signed the agreement between the government and SOCAR Trading for the supply of liquified natural gas (LNG) to the ElectroGas power station, based on the findings of an FIAU report leaked by MEP David Casa.
The Shift also revealed that Latvian authorities were investigating money laundering in connection with €28 million in suspect payments relating to an agreement concluded between Malta and SOCAR Trading in 2015 “concluded in a manner contrary to the interests of the [Maltese] State”.
At the time that the GoM LNG SSA was signed in April 2015, ElectroGas, and with it, the viability of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi’s poster LNG project, was in a dire situation.
Three months after the Maltese government bailed out ElectroGas with, on the one hand, the free GoM LNG SSA guarantee to SOCAR and, on the other, a further bank guarantee towards Bank of Valletta.
The promoters behind ElectroGas, including SOCAR, Tumas, Gasan, Paul Apap Bologna, Siemens, and Yorgen Fenech, paid themselves a further €12 million in “success fees”.
Apap Bologna, testifying before the Public Accounts Committee, said he couldn’t recall receiving the success fees, apart from saying he felt “intimidated” by the questions from the parliamentary committee last year.
ElectroGas, the consortium selected to supply a power station that was the party in government’s poster project for the 2013 general elections, appears to have received the benefit of this secret State guarantee without charge, raising serious concerns about its legality under EU law.
The long-hidden LNG Security of Supply Agreement (GoM LNG SSA) that disgraced former minister Konrad Mizzi signed in April 2015 and which the government has gone to great lengths to keep hidden from public scrutiny, was, in effect, an open cheque to SOCAR Trading – a Swiss subsidiary of Azerbaijan’s government-owned SOCAR – that was kept hidden from the European Commission.
Before today, this agreement had not been made public. Requests for copies, even in parliament, have been repeatedly stonewalled.
A copy of this agreement was obtained by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation after a year-long FOI battle with the energy ministry following The Shift’s reporting in October 2020 on the existence of this agreement and its significance.
