Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/800760
5 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Reply- ing to MaltaToday's questions on what services were rendered to Sky Gourmet, a PN spokesperson said: "The PN has already said that it will continue to respect the pri- vacy of the commercial arrange- ments between Media.link and its clients. Moreover, the matter is currently being investigated by the Electoral Commission and we are confident that we will defend the matter successfully there." Sky Gourmet Malta Ltd – a db Group joint venture with Vienna- based Airest Austria (Do & Co) and Maltese catering company James Caterers – provides in-flight catering services to Airmalta, Emirate Airlines and other top end carriers. Over the past two weeks, Labour has incessantly called on the Op- position leader Simon Busuttil to immediately publish the invoices for €70,800, purportedly booked for advertising. The hotel chain has claimed that it had been paying the salaries of two high-ranking officials – sec- retary-general Rosette Thake and CEO Brian St John – with €70,800 having been transferred to the par- ty in 2016 alone. But PN leader Simon Busuttil, who has admitted meeting Debono on a number of occasions, has de- nied these claims and argued that the money received by Media.link was a "commercial relationship linked to programming on Net TV and Media.Link." He has also refused to give the money back to the company, in- sisting that the transection was legal. Asked whether he would be publishing invoices to back up his claims, given that db Group said it did take out the equivalent of €70,800 in advertising, Busuttil has argued that it would not be right for the party to publish invoices because "a commercial relation- ship between two companies is, by its very nature, private." The PN is now facing an inves- tigation by the Electoral Commis- sion over claims that db Group advanced its donation to the PN's media company, under the guise of commercial services that may have not been rendered. The PN has so far resisted calls from the Labour Party to publish a copy of the invoices. The db Group is behind the de- velopment of the controversial project at St George's Bay in St Ju- lian's, which will see the land cur- rently occupied by the Institute of Tourism Studies, developed into a Hard Rock Hotel and luxury prop- erty believed to encompass a €300 million investment. The ITS deal will see Debono forking out only €15 million over ten years for public land that has been valued at €200 million. The total €60 million price tag for the land includes various ground rents that will in part be paid when property on site will be developed and sold off. After MaltaToday revealed that the PN deputy leader Mario de Marco was involved in ITS nego- tiations in his role as db Group's lawyer, Busuttil announced that the Opposition would be referring the contract for the transfer of the ITS site to the Auditor General to be investigated. De Marco has since announced that he has renounced the db Group brief but the storm which has overwhelmed the PN over the past two weeks has all but receded, with Busuttil insisting that there is no rift between him and right- hand man (page 3). jbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt MALTATODAY'S executive editor Matthew Vella has been slapped with three criminal li- bels, together with managing edi- tor Saviour Balzan, online editor Miriam Dalli and journalist Tim Diacono, instituted by business- man Sandro Ciliberti over reports into the procurement scandal at the Foundation of Tomorrow's Schools. Ciliberti filed another seven civil libel cases against various Mal- taToday journalists on the same subject. The reports concern the chro- nology of events before the resig- nation of the FTS chief executive Philip Rizzo, and the role of Ed- ward Caruana, a person of trust of education minister Evarist Bar- tolo, responsible for FTS procure- ment. Caruana was suspended from his job since allegations of kickbacks from FTS payments surfaced. Caruana is also the brother of the education ministry's permanent secretary Joseph Caruana. Unlike other reports of alleged abuse, the FTS scandal did not lead to the appointment of an in- dependent inquiry. Ciliberti featured in news re- ports on his role as middleman for the procurement of school and laboratory equipment, as well having won a beach concession in Comino. In 2016, his private residence in Xaghra was rocked by a minor explosion, in which nobody was injured. Ciliberti and his partner Alexandra Bosio were inside the garage at the time of the explosion. Ciliberti's Al-Nibras and Hang- man firms both took contracts from the FTS for the supply of lab equipment and school furniture to state schools, clinching some €2 million in public contracts since 2013, 75% of which were won in 2015. These included 21 procurement contracts won by public tender for lab refrigera- tors, furniture, and spectropho- tometers for the Water Services Corporation, office furniture for the University of Malta, the Gozo Sixth Form. In all, Al-Nibras and Hangman are together listed 54 times as suppliers for products and ser- vices to 36 state schools. A former member of the Val- letta FC committee, Ciliberti in 2010 was one of seven individuals suspended by the Malta FA disci- pline board for his involvement in the scuffles that broke out during a Super Cup match. The group were later cleared by a court of in- citing people to commit a crime. maltatoday, SUNDAY, 19 MARCH 2017 News Commission probe over donations 'invoiced' by media company Record criminal, civil libels over FTS probe Sandro Ciliberti The PN is yet to publish the invoices for services rendered by its media