Education Minister Evarist Bartolo today said former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi is playing with words or does not know the full facts when he denies "what I said in Parliament on efforts to hide corruption in the purchase of oil".

The minister was replying to a statement issued by Dr Gonzi, in which he denied he had received documents regarding corruption in oil procurement and that he had passed these documents to the Secret Service. Nor did he order anyone from his staff to pass these documents to the Secret Service.

In 2011, Mr Bartolo said, somebody sent documents with information about corruption to Dr Gonzi. These were delivered by a member of the Security Service on duty with the PM.

"Dr Gonzi did not want to touch them and told him to take them to be investigated," Mr Bartolo said.

The documents arrived at the Security Service but, instead of being investigated, contact was established between the Security Services and the secretariat of a minister (who was not named) and part of these documents were destroyed.

This case has already been mentioned during the election campaign. To questions about it, Dr Gonzi always replied that whenever he received information he sent it for investigation, Mr Bartolo said.

"This is what he did in this circumstance. But does he know what happened when the documents were sent for investigation? Does he know that parts of these documents were destroyed? If he knew, what did he know about this? If he does not know, how can he deny such facts?", Mr Bartolo said.

In another reaction, Dr Gonzi said that he does not play with words “as others do when they say something and do another”.

“Neither do I invent things or twist them to my liking for political advantage or to deflect attention. I will repeat what I said yesterday and declare in the most categorical way that the allegation made by Mr Bartolo is false and that it is not true that I passed over, or instructed anyone to do so on my behalf, documents of this kind to the country’s Security Services.”