The now former Deputy Chairperson of Malta Enterprise, Peter Borg, has expressed disappointment that no member of the Malta Enterprise Investment Committee, including himself, was called to testify before the inquiry board in the court hearings throughout the Sofia public inquiry.

“Such testimony could have corrected some misconceptions and incorrect assumptions made by the inquiry in its conclusions,” Borg said.

Borg resigned following the publication of the report on the Jean Paul Sofia public inquiry report, which found serious shortcomings.

Furthermore, Borg stated that the Investment Committee “is a non-executive body whose remit is not to assess such proposals, but to debate and decide upon them, based on documentation and recommendations submitted by Malta Enterprise management.” Hence, he iterated that the Committee “cannot, and should not be held responsible for any incomplete or untruthful information that may have been submitted to it.”

Borg decided to resign from his position as Deputy Chairman since he believes that “trust in our public institutions should be beyond doubt”, in spite of the reservations he shares over the concerning conclusions derived in the report on the Malta Enterprise Investment Committee that he had chaired. He also labelled his resignation as a “heartfelt gesture of my deep respect and sympathy for the family of Jean Paul Sofia.”

“As a father myself, I can only imagine the sorrow and pain of this experience and I hope the family can finally begin to find some peace and closure,” he said.

Following Borg, two other Malta Enterprise board members, namely Paul Abela and Victor Carachi, have also resigned from the Investment Committee. Additionally, Kevin Camilleri – the Malta Enterprise official who assessed the All Plus Ltd project application that led to the death of Sofia – was sacked after his position was deemed “no longer tenable”.

Borg, Abela, and Carachi were all on the committee that approved this proposal to build a furniture factory on government land in Corradino back in 2019.

Upon his resignation, Carachi informed Times of Malta that he resigned from the committee despite insisting that he was not present when the decision was taken to approve the Corradino factory. He explained that arrived late for that particular meeting and arrived after the proposal had been discussed and approved.

The Sofia public inquiry report singled out the Malta Enterprise Investment Committee for its assessing this proposal in an “amateurish and superficial” manner. Furthermore, the inquiry board concluded that the committee lacked transparency in its decision-making process and failed to scrutinise the proposal itself.