The attorney general had given advice that the Voice of the Mediterranean does not fall under the government’s Financial Regulations. But a legal expert consulted by the auditor general, Professor Ian Refalo, gave an opposite view.

A confrontation between the two legal experts will thus set the stage for the Public Accounts Committee examination of the auditor general’s critical report on VoM.

Yesterday’s sitting of the PAC was held in a closed, mostly unused committee room on the groundfloor of the palace. It is near the corner of Archbishop Street with Merchants Street, where the government printing press linotypists used to work, and has far less space than the usual committee room. This had the consequence of setting an uncomfortable environment for MPs, civil servants and media for a mainly procedural matter.

The real hearing will thus begin this evening, hopefully in a better room, with the examination of the legal advice, plus the testimonies of former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Gaetan Naudi and Director of Corporate Services Charles Mifsud.

The protagonist of the VoM affair, Ambassador Richard Muscat, formerly VoM’s Managing Director, is still not in Malta because, Permanent Secretary Cecilia Attard Pirotta informed the PAC, there are no direct flights between Malta and Dublin. He can be told when to appear.

Following this evening’s sitting, the PAC will meet again tomorrow morning and then on Monday evening.

PAC chairman Charles Mangion was for setting out the timetable and list of witnesses right at the beginning of yesterday’s sitting, but he was in a sense forestalled by Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech who argued that what must first be established is whether VoM fell under the government’s financial regulations or not.

It does not follow that if it is the government which forks out the money, then the entity which gets the money must abide by the government’s financial regulations, Mr Fenech argued. For instance, the government gives Lm12 million to the church, but it does not ask the church to abide by its financial regulations.

Leo Brincat referred to another report on VoM, done, at his request, by the Foreign Ministry itself, and signed by then Permanent Secretary Gaetan Naudi and Director Corporate Services Charles Mifsud. That report, tabled in December 2003, had included the advice of the attorney general that VoM did not fall under the financial regulations.

However, Mr Brincat argued, during the entire time under examination, the radio station, which began in 1984 as a joint venture between Malta and Libya, was being totally financed by the government of Malta.

Mr Brincat also pointed out that while the Naudi-Mifsud team took just three weeks to come up with a report which named the people that the auditor general mentioned but did not name, the auditor general took two years to conclude the study.

Joe Galea, the Auditor General said his examination studied 4,000 transactions, conducted 29 interviews and even contacted people who were abroad.

Mr Fenech said that after the first issue is solved, then the PAC must also study the issue of good governance. He made it clear that the government does not want to hide anything: on the contrary it does not want to condone bad governance.

Mr Brincat asked Ms Attard Pirotta to confirm that a Libyan foreign minister told former foreign minister Joe Borg that Libya was no longer interested in the radio and that the last payment from Libya was made in 2002 and regarded payment for 1997.

And that Libyan dues till today amount to Lm1 million.

Ms Attard Pirotta said there was never any indication from the Libyan side that they would not pay their dues. She said she needed time to seek all the answers but all the files on VoM were at the auditor general’s office.

She asked for the files on Friday and on Monday was informed the files will not leave the auditor general’s office. Dr Mangion promptly suggested to Ms Attard Pirotta that she should go there and consult them there.

It was only at this last stage that the committee got down to list the people it wanted to hear.

Apart from the names already mentioned, mention was made of the Deputy Managing Director of VoM, Said Shain, councillors Alfred Zarb, Manni Spiteri and Carmel Attard, Joe Izzo, former ambassador Ali Nagem and accountant Helen Meli Attard, who never qualified her audit of VoM.