A company linked to alleged kidnapper Christian Borg has been formally awarded a €250,000 tender by Transport Malta for the provision of 41 vehicles.

Princess Operations is owned by Borg, who was arraigned on abduction and assault charges along with five others in February.

The other suspects are Tyson Grech, Luke John Milton, Thorne Mangion, Burton Azzopardi and Jeremy Borg. All six are currently out on bail.

The alleged victim, Carlos Schembri, had said he was threatened with having his fingers cut off, and his sister raped.

Borg is the owner of several companies, including No Deposit Cars Malta.

Transport Malta had issued the original tender in July 2020, and was won by Princess Holdings, which had submitted the cheapest bid.

An appeal was filed by one of the other bidding companies, but this was rejected by the Contracting Authority in August 2021 and by the Court of Appeal in January of this year. The court had confirmed that the bid by Princess Operations had been the cheapest one.

Despite this, the tender still appeared as being ‘under evaluation’ on the government tenders website, and the status was only changed to ‘awarded’ on 11 April.

Borg had resigned as director of Princess Operations after the abduction case, with the role taken over by former Labour Party photographer Joe Camenzuli.

Christian Borg was also involved in a property deal with Prime Minister Robert Abela.

The Times of Malta had reported that the deal netted Abela €45,000, “but the timeline of events raises suspicions over why he entered a contract to buy a green field only to transfer his stake in that contract to auto-dealer and alleged kidnapper Christian Borg a few months later.”

Abela, who was previously Borg’s legal advisor, has denied any wrongdoing but refused to answer questions during the electoral campaign.