Nationalist MEP candidate Peter Agius has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission, claiming abuse of taxpayers’ money in a direct order for a €247 million project at St Vincent de Paul home for the elderly.

Last month, the National Audit Office expressed doubt on whether a €274 million tender awarded to a consortium to manage four blocks at Saint Vincent de Paul secured value for money.

The NAO also found that no political authorisation to enter into a negotiated procedure with the consortium was requested from and provided by the Parliamentary Secretaries involved.

In a statement today, Agius said that scores of local companies are being excluded from public tenders as Government practices limit the market to a few known operators. A Local Council is obliged to publish a request for competitive offers for a playground of 10,000 euro while the Government dishes out direct orders of millions without publication and without competition, excluding potential bidders and hiking the bill for the tax payer.

Such is the case of the Vitals ‘concession’, the San Vinċenz direct orders and many more in a string of systematic abuse of public procurement rules which Government continues to flaunt notwithstanding repeated calls by the National Audit Office.

“We cannot allow this continued abuse of tax payer Money. Public procurement rules include very clear provisions obliging all public authority to guarantee transparency and wide competition. Maltese law on public procurement implements the European Public Procurement Directive. The European Commission should monitor more closely Maltese public procurement practices to ensure wider competition allowing scores of small Maltese companies to enter the now barraged public tendering market,” Agius said.

“For these reasons I submitted a formal complaint to European Commissioner Thierry Breton for the European Commission to investigate the ongoing systematic breaches of the spirit and the word of public procurement rules by public authorities in Malta taking the San Vinċenz case as a case study of what to avoid in public procurement. In this particular case, a published tender of 57 million euro was extended and converted by stealth through a series of ambiguous terms into a direct order of 274 million euros excluding a myriad of other potential bidders and potential savings of millions to the taxpayer.”