Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1264355
15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 28 JUNE 2020 NEWS business organisations and individual business leaders. Later that year, Muscat, in his vestig- es as Opposition leader, travelled with a party delegation to China and later to Libya. On those visits, Muscat explored areas of cooperation for when his party got into government. Schembri had accompanied Muscat on the Libya trip. This is probably the period when La- bour's overtures to the business com- munity drew Schembri and Fenech back together. In this year, controversy raged over the new power station contract that was awarded to Danish firm BWSC. The Na- tionalist administration back then had scrapped plans to shift power generation to gas, opting instead for a plant that would continue running on heavy fuel oil. A rejected gas plan According to the testimony of former PN secretary general Paul Borg Olivier in the Caruana Galizia public inquiry, in 2009 the PN had received a proposal for a power station that worked on gas sup- plied from a storage ship. The PN had turned down that proposal made to it by Paul Apap Bologna. Apap Bologna had told Borg Olivier that he would rope in influential Maltese business families along with foreign in- vestors. British firm Gasol had also been listed in a presentation given back then. Borg Olivier testified that Apap Bolo- gna had told him "we will do our bit if you do yours". The former PN secretary general told the inquiry he was troubled by that phrase. "I asked him what he meant. He replied with a cryptic smile," Borg Olivier said. Eventually, the gas plan presented by Apap Bologna became the PL govern- ment's energy plan in the 2013 general election. It was fronted by Konrad Mizzi, a new candidate attracted to the PL by Muscat. In September 2012, Mizzi had told Times of Malta in an interview that he was working on an energy plan for the PL. "We have a roadmap," he had said. The PL government immediately put in motion the process to issue a tender for a new gas power station and liquefied natural gas terminal soon after winning the 2013 general election, held in March. Electrogas eventually won the contract - its shareholders were Apap Bologna, the Gasan and Tumas family groups, Gasol, Azerbaijan's SOCAR and Germa- ny's Siemens. Yorgen Fenech, who also owned per- sonal shares in Electrogas, apart from those held by the family company, was the one appearing on all dealings be- tween the company and government. Apap Bologna has always denied ever approaching the Labour Party before the election with his idea despite the remark- able resemblance between the PL energy plan and the presentation rejected by the previous PN administration. This was the climate in which the re- vived relationship between Schembri and Fenech was forged 10 years ago. A business relationship called 17 Black But the relationship took a business turn in 2015 when Schembri's account- ants included the Dubai companies 17 Black and Macbridge as target clients for his Panama company Tillgate. Schembri's Panama company was re- vealed in 2016 when journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia pre-empted the interna- tional journalistic investigation, Panama Papers, and published the information. Schembri and Mizzi were outed for opening Panama companies and trusts in New Zealand but the link to 17 Black was not yet known. According to testimony given by her son Matthew, Daphne had mentioned 17 Black and Macbridge to him around April 2016 but there was no information yet on the two secretive companies and she never wrote anything about them. This changed in February 2017 when Daphne published a cryptic post, refer- ring to 17 Black as a Dubai company that was allegedly used by Schembri, Mizzi, Joseph Muscat and John Dalli to move money. Ownership of 17 Black was unknown until then and neither was it known that it was a target client of Schembri's and Mizzi's Panama companies. Court testimony by murder middle- man Melvin Theuma suggests that it was around this time that Fenech hatched the plot to murder Daphne. A leaked report from the Financial In- telligence Analysis Unit during the 2017 election campaign indicated that 17 Black had received money from the ship agent of the gas power station's floating storage unit. But the news got lost in a campaign overshadowed by the Egrant allegation. After Caruana Galizia was murdered in October 2017, her work was taken up by a consortium of international journalists and in April 2018 the information was outed that 17 Black was a target client for Schembri and Mizzi's Panama com- panies. For the first time, Schembri admitted 17 Black's inclusion as a target client but kept denying knowledge of who it be- longed to and what it does. We now know that Schembri had lied back then and not only did he know who it belonged to but had a plan for it. It was in November 2018 that Reuters discovered that 17 Black belonged to Fenech, shedding light on the incontro- vertible business link between himself, Schembri and Mizzi. More recent revelations show that 17 Black benefitted to the tune of millions from a Montenegro wind farm project purchased by Enemalta. Fenech was arrested last November and charged with masterminding the murder of Caruana Galizia. The pardoned middleman has said that Fenech wanted the journalist dead be- cause she was going to publish something about his uncle, Ray Fenech. Theuma added that he later came to understand that the damning information was about Yorgen himself and not his uncle. Although the motive has not yet been explained in court, all fingers point to- wards 17 Black and the dirty business it may have been involved in. SCHEMBRI'S DENIALS Keith Schembri's court testimony con- trasts with that given by Melvin Theuma in several aspects. We outline some of the denials Schembri made in court in an exchange with prosecuting Inspec- tor Keith Arnaud about claims that he promised bail to the three men accused of murdering Caruana Galizia: Schembri: "I have no connection with things like that. I heard the recordings... at the police lockup when I was given disclosure. When you pressed Melvin Theuma as to why he mentioned Keith Schembri, he said that he wanted to needle Fenech. I never spoke to anyone about bail for anyone." Inspector Arnaud: "In one of the tapes, Yorgen tells Theuma that you had con- firmed bail." Schembri: "I deny it. Bail was never mentioned." Schembri was also asked whether he knew of the murder plot. Schembri: "Yorgen never told me about a crime. I found out about it when I was with Arnaud and other investigators [during security meetings with the Prime Minister after the murder took place]... Yorgen never told me that he had com- mitted this homicide." On Theuma's claim that Schembri and Fenech had engaged him to murder Caru- ana Galizia. Schembri: "I categorically deny it." Magistrate: "So everyone who men- tioned you... what do you say to this?" Schembri: "I think my position made me the perfect target... as the government we would discuss it a lot, but I wouldn't discuss it with my wife. What I can say is that I would really go through fire for Yorgen Fenech but I never spoke to him about this case. Not even when I was get- ting close to him, I had to keep a straight face and pretend not to know." Magistrate: "So all these people are ly- ing?" Schembri: "I deny ever having this in- volvement as described by the people in this case. On whether he knew the Degiorgios. Schembri: "I never spoke to, or knew George Degiorgio and the other men... I don't know Mario Degiorgio (a brother of George and Alfred, who was chasing Theuma on bail for his siblings), and nev- er had contact with him."