Former PN Secretary General Paul Borg Olivier has poked holes in Paul Apap Bologna’s testimony to the public inquiry investigating the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Apap Bologna faced the public inquiry board on Friday, and was questioned mainly on his role in the Electrogas power station project. Apap Bologna is one of the triumvate which makes up GEM Holdings, which pitched the project to both the PN and PL and which are 33% shareholders in Electrogas.
He told the board on Friday that he did not know that Electrogas was in default, and that he had learnt many things about the project and about Yorgen Fenech – another shareholder in GEM – through the press. He also denied meeting Konrad Mizzi before the project was awarded, but there were a number of questions which Apap Bologna could not answer, saying that he was either not privy to the details required or that he had to “go back to check” on other answers.
In a Facebook post following Apap Bologna’s testimony on Friday, Borg Olivier contradicted Apap Bologna’s testimony in terms of the timeline of his meeting with the PN about the power station project.
Apap Bologna told the board that his meeting was in 2007 or 2008, but Borg Olivier said that this could not have been the case as he had only assumed office in July 2008. He said that the meeting actually took place in 2009.
“It is clear that this is done in a bid to distance the meeting to a time before Joseph Muscat became leader of the Opposition”, Borg Olivier said of Apap Bologna’s apparent error.
“Paul Apap Bologna came half through 2009. That was the same time when Joseph Muscat had anointed Keith Schembri as the chairperson of the Labour Party Energy working group, traveling to Libya together seeking energy proposals”, the former PN secretary general said.
“It was further reported that he said that the presentation was not his but one drafted by Gasol. Again, Paul is not correct here. Gasol, was only one of the partners, with Mr Apap Bologna presenting himself as the LEAD partner in the project”, he added, attaching pictures of the presentation where Apap Bologna is described as the Maltese leader of the project.
He also questioned Apap Bologna’s denial of not having met the Labour Party before the 2013 election, observing how if this was the case, Apap Bologna was quick to “dust off the shelved report, presented three years earlier, immediately once Joseph Muscat announced the project in January 2013.”
He added that this is especially hard to believe “when GEM, the name used for consortium company incorporated in 2013 between Fenech, Apap Bologna and Gasan, was the same name in his 2009 presentation. Quite a coincidence. It looks like one of the finger-prints on the alleged done deal.”
The power station has long been under scrutiny, with several corruption allegations centred around it. It suffered another blow in recent days when one of the shareholders – Gasan Enterprises – announced that it wanted out of the deal.
Mark Gasan himself is expected to testify in the public inquiry on Monday.