There have been so many glaring conflicts of interest when it comes to the new Delimara power station that one is becoming increasingly hard-pressed to identify one facet of the €400 million plus project that does not amount to a conflict of interest.

The Times yesterday reported how former energy minister Konrad Mizzi had appointed Nexia BT as the advisors for the new power station, while at the same time the firm had also been appointed as the auditors of the Maltese element of the development, GEM Holdings, which counts the Tumas and Gasan groups as its shareholders.

Although the firm insists that it had been appointed as GEM’s auditors after the power station contract had been awarded, the more one looks at how matters developed, the more one sees a very tight-knit circle of people that have driven the controversial project from the outset, and who have blurred the lines between the public and private sector practically beyond all recognition.

This latest conflict of interest that has been revealed is yet another insult to the people and the government’s hollow promise of good governance.

This newsroom had reported earlier this year how it was international law firm Mossack Fonseca, which has been at the epicentre of the global Panama Papers scandal, that handled the energy minister and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff’s international financial set-ups, as well as handling, on the other side of the globe in the Seychelles, the mother company and controlling interest of Gasol, the power station’s former lead developer. 

The shareholding in Mossack Fonseca & Co. (Malta) Limited business was fully and solely owned by BT International Limited, a company that is in turn fully and solely owned by Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna. 

In essence, Mossack Fonseca services in Malta were rendered by partners at Nexia BT.  The Maltese branch of Mossack Fonseca has vanished and has been transferred to the Caribbean in the wake of the scandal.

But it is the association of Nexia BT with Mossack Fonseca, and the different roles taken on by each of them with respect to the parties involved in the power and gas deal that give rise to several of the project’s main conflicts of interest.

Of all conflicts of interest identified by this newsroom, the most serious is that while the power and gas supply agreement was being negotiated, the former energy minister used the services of Nexia BT, which was already the established representative of Mossack Fonseca in Malta, to acquire his infamous Panamanian company and to set up a New Zealand trust, as did the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri.

At the same time, the Mossack Fonseca office in the Seychelles served as the registered office of African Gas Development Corporation Limited, which, at the time of the deal’s negotiation, held effective control of Gasol, the company which owned a 30 per cent shareholding in Electrogas and was the consortium’s project leader.

The involvement of Mossack Fonseca with two main parties to the deal in such a manner was, in itself, a conflict of interest par excellence.

The fact that Dr Mizzi involved Mossack Fonseca in his personal financial matters while the firm was involved also in the running of Gasol’s parent company point, at best, to a very serious failure on the part of the minister, who allowed this conflict of interest to persist.

Meanwhile, Nexia BT had been engaged in the audit of the annual report of GEM Holdings Limited for the year ended 31 December 2014, which they signed off on 20 July 2015. Nexia BT’s associates Mossack Fonseca in the Seychelles, meanwhile, were serving as the office from which Gasol, GEM’s partners in the Electrogas deal, was effectively controlled and majority owned.

The involvement of Nexia BT with GEM while it was also engaged in the personal affairs of Dr Mizzi, who was on the other side of the power and gas deal in which GEM had a significant interest, points to yet another serious conflict of interest.

Gasol exited the Electrogas consortium on 22 July 2015, the very same date on which Dr Mizzi’s Panamanian companies were settled into his New Zealand trust.  We are told, however, by Dr Mizzi that the date is but a mere coincidence.

Financial specialists believe that the value of Gasol’s share transfer in the week when the power and gas deal was substantially completed would have amounted to tens of millions of euros as the deal would have then acquired its equity value, after the bank loan that the consortium secured with the government’s backing in the form of the controversial €360 million guarantee.

On exit, Gasol transferred its 30 per cent shareholding to the remaining partners for a still undisclosed sum.  Gasol had acquired its shareholding in Electrogas in 2014 for the sum of €3,000 and the difference between the exit value and €3,000 would have been registered as profit due to the shareholders of Gasol, of which African Gas Development Corporation Limited was the majority shareholder and administered, as said, by Mossack Fonseca, who Nexia BT represented in Malta.

The conflicts of interest are enough to boggle the mind, and, are also enough for any serious anti-fraud agency to sink their teeth into and make a meal of.