Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt yesterday claimed to have come up with cast-iron proof that an email suggesting he met George Farrugia – the man at the heart of oil trading corruption claims – in 2004 has been manipulated. The supposed proof: an inconsistency in the language of the email’s date.

But Dr Gatt may have spoken too soon, as a quick exercise undertaken by this newspaper conclusively disproves the entire basis of his ‘smoking gun’ claim.

The email in question is dated 19 June 2004, and was first revealed by the MaltaToday newspaper. In the email, Mr Farrugia, who has received a conditional presidential pardon over the case in return for helping with police investigations, told a representative of French oil company Total that he has “had meetings with top officials and the minister himself and feel[s] that it is too early to start any negotiations”.

At a press conference held at PN headquarters yesterday, Dr Gatt insisted that the email as presented had one damning inconsistency: the language of its date.

The email’s date, which is generated automatically when it is printed, was in Maltese, and Dr Gatt insisted that this was irrefutable proof of manipulation since the Maltese language setting for computers had only been created in 2006. As such, Dr Gatt claimed, the email was a forgery since it could not have had the date printed in Maltese before 2006.

But, as this newspaper ascertained beyond doubt, the date’s format is not automatically generated when it is sent but, rather, when it is printed – thus dispelling Dr Gatt’s ‘evidence’.

To test this, we changed one of our newsroom computers’ system language to Italian, and printed out an email sent by the Department of Information last Sunday, and the date that was generated was read “Domenica 10/02/2013."  Other similar tests on much earlier emails produced the same result.

So ultimately, all that was proved by Dr Gatt was that the computer that had printed out the email had been set to the Maltese language at the time at which it had been printed out, and not necessarily when it had been created.

Dr Gatt also highlighted another claimed inconsistency in the email, insisting that the Maltese word for June – “Gunju” – was not spelt with a dotted G: as it would have been in the text of an automatically-generated email heading. But a quick look at the image of the email in question on the newspaper’s website completely disproves this claim: the email is reproduced in varying levels of quality in its articles, but the clearest images clearly show that this dot is very much present.

The minister did raise other points in the press conference, as explained below, but he presented no other evidence for any possible manipulation for the email at the heart of the controversy.

Minister suggests Labour candidates involved in frame-up

Dr Gatt continued to reiterate his strong suspicions that he had been framed, and at the press conference, he raised questions on the possible involvement of three Labour election candidates – MP Evarist Bartolo, David Farrugia Sacco and Manuel Mallia – may have been involved.

The minister noted that when The Times reproduced the email, it sourced it off Mr Bartolo’s Facebook page, and said that this was ‘interesting’ since he was not the only Labour candidate to be involved.

Dr Gatt mentioned Dr Farrugia Sacco and Dr Mallia since both had represented Mr Farrugia’s brothers, who had fallen out with him after accusing him of siphoning funds from their company, Powerplan Ltd. Dr Farrugia Sacco had represented Mr Farrugia’s brothers in a civil case against him, while Dr Mallia had represented their company.

The minister claimed that Dr Mallia was part of an investigative audit into these emails, and pointed out that he had been to Geneva on the company’s behalf.

He questioned the timing of the release of the emails, wondering whether people had been holding on to the emails and who decided to leak them to newspapers. MaltaToday editor Saviour Balzan, who rushed to the press conference midway, insisted simply that the sources were third parties who were not remotely tied with any political cause.

Dr Gatt, however, insisted that he was practically certain that Dr Mallia was involved, and said that if he was to be believed on his claim that he heard of the emails through MaltaToday, that could only mean that the invoice linked to Frank Sammut – which set the whole issue in motion – was false.

He also pointed out that the Labour Party’s journalists continuously raised questions on the pardon granted to Mr Farrugia, suggesting that the pardon was making the party uncomfortable. He wondered whether Labour was afraid of what Mr Farrugia would reveal.

Candidates lambast ‘Inspector Clouseau’, to press charges for defamation

But at a press conference held to reply to his claims, the three candidates mentioned by Dr Gatt strongly denied any involvement in a frame-up, and announced that they would file criminal proceedings against him for defamation.

Mr Bartolo sarcastically remarked that “Inspector Jacques Clouseau” had appeared on the Maltese political scene on the day, with reference to the bumbling detective protagonist of the Pink Panther films. He repeatedly referred to Dr Gatt as Inspector Clouseau throughout the press conference as he dismissed his detective work.

But the party appeared not to have picked up on Dr Gatt’s error of judgment on the email. When asked to comment on the dating format, Mr Bartolo said – after stating that “Clouseau” should continue his investigations – that they had no reason to comment on an email they had nothing to do with.

“The emails mention Gatt, it’s his baby, he’s in deep sh*t,” Mr Bartolo said when pressed further, betraying his annoyance at the persistent questioning in an interview that was being filmed. But he stressed that such strong words were justified in context of what he described as the biggest political scandal in Maltese history.

The MP also pointed out that he did not upload the email himself on Facebook, but was simply tagged when it was uploaded, as had many others. The original source is a page named “Ser nivvota PL fl-elezzjoni generali li jmiss” (I will vote Labour in the next election), whose administrators do not identify themselves.

Both Dr Mallia and Dr Farrugia Sacco reiterated that they had no prior knowledge of the emails, and Dr Mallia denied forming part of the investigative audit. He noted that such audits were technical affairs, and that he lacked the expertise to work on them.

Dr Farrugia Sacco also denied that his brother – an IT expert – was involved in this audit when asked, stating that he could also exclude that his brother or his legal partners were involved in the dissemination of any information.

The two stressed that they could not breach professional secrecy, with Dr Mallia stating that while he had come to know numerous secrets of a political nature during his long career, he would be taking them to the grave with him.

Labour had no problem whatsoever with the granting of a pardon to Mr Farrugia, Mr Bartolo insisted, although Dr Mallia did raise reservations on the fact that Dr Gatt attended the Cabinet meeting when it was being discussed. He pointed out that Cabinet might have considered information which is not yet public when deciding to grant the pardon, which Dr Gatt is now privy to.

Mr Bartolo also insisted that he was informed that one of the persons questioned over the case has claimed that the signature on certain documents was not actually his own, and asked Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi to comment on this matter.

He also asked Dr Gonzi to state whether he was informed of any allegations of corruption in oil procurement even before 2008, and whether he referred the matter to the police if he did.

The MP asked Dr Gatt two questions: firstly whether any of those being investigated are on the “JS list,” which he described as a list of donors made up of individuals and companies awarded public contracts.

He also questioned the minister’s decision to dismiss the chairman of the fuel procurement advisory committee, stating that this chairman had wanted to recruit two graduate-level employees to do things seriously.