“I have no conflict of interest,” Alicia Bugeja Said declared soon after her election to parliament and her appointment to cabinet. Her electoral campaign had been funded, in huge part, by operators in the fishing industry. The NAO now revealed that those same operators saved €2.194 million in payments that Alicia Said’s secretariat should have collected but didn’t.
Bugeja Said was criticised for accepting thousands of euro in donations from fishing industry operators. Fish farm operators gave her €2,500. Fish sellers Frutti di Mare donated another €2,500, Azzopardi fisheries another €1,200. Those funds for her successful election campaign amounted to over a third of her total spend. Of course Bugeja Said had worked for that money. While still Fisheries Department Director in July 2021 she penned an article defending the fishing operators who’d go on to fund her campaign.
In an article called “Conservation requires conversation” she lamented that the consultation process on Marine Protected Areas was not providing fish operators the opportunity for “truly active participation”. She complained that the consultation process “still leaves much to be desired”. “The last time I was speaking to fishers, they raised questions on what could become of the fishing sector should the reserves be enforced,” she wrote. This was the Director of Fisheries lobbying against enforcement of marine protected areas in order to allow the fishing industry free rein.
When Bugeja Said was accused of conflict of interest she insisted there was none. “What I received as donations were all legal and I declared everything according to law…..I ask the people now to judge me based on the work I will be doing in this important sector,” she rebutted.
It didn’t take very long for that work to become apparent. She was found guilty of breaching ethics when she used her name and political logo in a poster she sent to ministry officials informing them of a “swimming with tuna” event that she organised at a tuna ranch in collaboration with industry operators.
Now the NAO has revealed more of her work. The NAO report is devastating. The NAO found a mess in her fisheries and aquaculture department. It found that the software being used is “obsolete” and “this led to records that were inaccurate and incomplete”. There was “improper use of below-the-line accounts, expired contracts and substantial amounts due from fish farms operators were also noted”. Could the NAO report be more damning?
The department for which Bugeja Said is responsible saved those fish farm operators hundreds of thousands of euro over the years. Those should have gone into public coffers to fund medicines, schools, social benefits. Instead they stayed in the pockets of the very operators who funded her election campaign.
In 2022 alone when Bugeja Said was firmly in control of the Fisheries department, the Ministry failed to collect almost €300,000 out of a total of €760,000 it was owed. There was worse.
Fish farm operators were meant to pay a lump sum of €230,000 each per concession as well as a €35,000 annual fee per concession. Bugeja Said’s department admitted that “all contracts had expired and were not renewed”. Her department continued to issue an invoice for €35,000 to all operators but “not all of them honoured such obligations”. And Bugeja Said who was meant to collect that money on our behalf didn’t pursue those who didn’t pay. The permanent secretary allowed some operators to get away with €35,000 per year. The NAO calculated that her department failed to collect “not less than €534,000”. Besides, “a further approximate €1.5 million was long overdue from the concessionaires”.
A further €160,000 owed to the Department in annual permit fees in relation to tuna and other fish catches remained uncollected. In total over two million euro owed by fish farm and other operators in the fish industry remained uncollected by Bugeja Said.
Bugeja Said hasn’t even bothered to enact legislation to ensure that those outstanding fees are collected. Her department is so medieval that transactions are “manually inputted” and “invoices and receipts were also issued manually”. This is the 21st century for goodness sake. Her department doesn’t even have “general standard operating procedures to cover the day-to-day processes”. This, the NAO noted, “amplifies the potential for fraud”.
Bugeja Said has no chance of recouping what was owed to us. She hasn’t bothered to renew expired contracts. And there is a “lack of documentation available” the NAO noted. From the looks of things Bugeja Said isn’t rushing to pick up her own mess. There is no indication that any legislation is planned to rectify the total anarchy in the fishing industry. Bugeja Said’s department confirmed with the NAO that “there was no additional legislation to regulate this yet, this has also not been enforced, and no action was taken by the Department” to collect hundreds of thousands “outstanding up till end September 2023”.
To add insult to injury €65,000 that were collected were put into the wrong account. Bugeja Said’s department “confirmed that this was a mistake”. Only when the NAO found out was the Treasury contacted and “the balance was revised”. In another mistake the invoice issued for the amount due by fishing operators included an unauthorised “deduction”. “Management confirmed that this was an error,” the NAO report declared.
Not only have the fishing industry operators been “forgiven” so much money, they were also given deductions. What little money was collected went into the wrong account and was used for unapproved “unrelated consultancy services” (€30,000 excluding VAT), unapproved overtime (€22,621) or retrospectively approved overtime (€44,000).
The only people benefitting from this scandalous mayhem are the fishing industry operators and Alicia Bugeja Said. As for the rest of us we’ve been robbed of at least €2.194 million. The next you’re sent to beg the Community Chest for your life-saving treatment keep that in mind.