I have the strangest feeling the Labour Party is going to regret its Faustian pact with a manipulative drunk
timesofmalta.com reports early this morning:
CACHIA CARUANA CHALLENGES VELLA TO SAY WHO OMITTED CRUCIAL CLAUSE IN RJ70s PURCHASE CONTRACT
Richard Cachia Caruana raised questions last night over how, then Tourism Minister Karmenu Vella had not revealed the outcome of an inquiry into why members of the management of Air Malta omitted crucial trip cost guarantees in the contract for the purchase of four Avro RJ70 aircraft in the mid 1990s.
Mr Cachia Caruana, a director of Air Malta at the time, said the omission of the clauses were made without the knowledge of the airline’s board and they were the reason why the airline incurred considerable costs when technical problems developed.
The statement was issued in a detailed reaction after Mr Vella yesterday claimed that in 1996 Mr Cacha Caruana told him he had not agreed with the board’s decision to purchase the new aircraft. In an initial reaction, Mr Cachia Caruana had denied Mr Vella’s claim.
In his detailed statement he reiterated that Mr Vella’s statement was fictional.
He said he had agreed with all the other members of the board on the purchase of the Avro RJ70 aircraft and also in Air Malta’s investment in Azzurra Air.
He denied having sought a meeting with Mr Vella or that he had made contact with him for the purpose he had described.
Mr Cachia Caruana recalled that:
1. The purchase of the Avro aircraft was agreed unanimously by the members of the board on the basis of technical and financial information.
2. The decision was taken on the basis of a strategy for Malta to become a travel hub, with the airline planning to raise its scheduled flights by 35%.
3. The board’s decision to purchase the Avro RJ70s was also based on a specific clause – known as trip cost gaurantee – which guaranteed the cost of operating the four aircraft for 10 years. This meant that during that period, Air Malta would not have been exposed to any risks from technical or operational problems affecting the aircraft.
4. Once the aircraft came into service and problems developed, the board, including himself, called on the management to exercise the trip cost guarantee so that Air Malta could cover the additional costs which the problems had caused,
It was only at this stage that the management informed the board that the guarantee had been left out of the signed contract – without the board having been informed.
6. For months, particularly in the first months of the Labour administration in 1996 the board and himself had strongly demanded an explanation for this serious omission, which completely changed the commercial nature of the purchase agreement since it exposed Air Malta to risks from the operation of the aircraft.
7. In March 1997, the airline’s board (of which he was a member) appointed a board of inquiry to investigate the purchase of the planes, to determine why the trip cost guarantee was omitted from the signed contract and to ascertain who was responsible for this omission.
8. Mr Cachia Caruana said that as far as he could recall, the report of this board of inquiry was never published by the new Board appointed by Mr Vella for reasons which Mr Vella could explain.
No sworn declaration by Mr Vella could alter this documented truth, Mr Cachia Caruana, said and he therefore had nothing to hide.
Mr Vella, however, was hiding his own affairs and the affairs of those he had appointed on the Air Malta board. 15 years on, he was trying to blame others for matters which he needed to explain.
Instead of making false allegations, Mr Vella needed to say who, in the Air Malta management, omitted the trip cost guarantee and why the new board of directors did not publish the inquiry report, Mr Cachia Caruana said.
19 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Kif qatt tista temmen lil Karmenu Vella meta dan kien ministru fi zmien Mintoff dahal fil bajja ta’ l-ghadira ma John Dalli tal-mlp bil cabin cruiser hattew ma nafx kemm il kaxxa u fi staqqrija li aktarx kienet bl afidavit ukoll jiddikjara li ma kienx jaf li kellu jidhol id-dwana biex biex ihallas id-dazju meta dan mien ministru tal-gvern.
Tghid mhux ser nemmen lillu hu mhux lil RCC, hallina Karm “LIL MIN TAFU ISAQSIEX GHALIH “jghid il qawl Malti.
Dawn tal-PL kemm ghandhom biza min RCC ma jriduhx fl-Ewropa biex ma gbiex l-ahjar ghal Malta u issa ma jridduhx lanqas fil PN ghax jirbhilhom l-elezzjoni flimkien mat-team tal PN u qeghdin jinqdew b’JPO biex forsi jatuh il-permess tal Mistra.
My, my.
Now, Mr Vella, let’s see you crawl out of this one.
Never mind JPOS and his teatrics. This is, shall we say, slightly more politically relevant.
You just have to read this story. Joseph Muscat said on TVM’s Dissett that he had checked his friend JPOS’s allegations with “various Labour officials”, but he didn’t bother checking them out with the Labour leader of the time.
This is turning into a political Monty Python show with very serious consequences.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120712/local/Sant-not-asked-on-Cachia-Caruana-claim.428188
I can understand that JPOS may not be on speaking terms with Sant but that shouldn’t be the case with Muscat.
Sant should have been the very first person to be contacted by Muscat.
At last someone at The Times woke up and it dawned on him to check a few facts.
Turns out all the people he spoke to (some 5 or 6 ministers of the time plus party l.eader Sant) hadn’t spoken to RCC or even to Joseph Muscat about JPO’s allegations.
Any decent PL delegate who voted for Joseph Muscat as leader should be banging their head against the wall and shouting “WHAT HAVE WE DONE!”
Watch Joseph Muscat talk about JPOS’ allegations:
http://tvm.com.mt
Click on “Sunday” and FF to 12:35.
This will only be available for the next couple of days. Would anyone care to lift the relevant bits and youtube them?
I find it so sickening that an aspiring statesman constantly refers to the current prime minister as “Gonzipn”.
What have they done, indeed.
Found a better source:
http://www.dissett.tv/Dissett_11_12/Dissett.html
FF to 11:09
FF to 12:20:
At 12:24,
RC: Ma Jeffrey tkellimt, per eżempju?
JM: Fuq dan li qed jiġri f’dan il-punt? Le.
Draw your own conclusions.
Various, but not the only one mentioned in JPO’s allegations! And now it has turned out that the “various” are only two chaps, one of which has already made a mockery of the whole thing by his sworn statement.
Why do i think that this farce is going to smash right back in Labour’s face?
Sant ? Who is Sant?
Karmenu Vella had referred to the Sargas proposal as ‘il-progett ta’ John Dalli’ on TV, correcting himself immediately.
Always a nice guy.
Very evasive and misleading answer from “il-Guy”:
“He noted that Mr Cachia Caruana was not denying that mistaken decisions had been taken by Air Malta, but was only trying to distance himself from them, even though he was a member of the board, and the board was unanimous in its decisions.”
RCC has made it abundantly clear that he supported those decisions. His difficulty is with the implementation of those decisions and that’s where KV has questions to answer.
And all for the sake of MISTRA.
Can somebody please explain this to me: The motion to remove RCC took several sittings. The Labour party and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando had all the opportunity to bring this issue in the open. They didn’t do it. Why?
I very much doubt that most voters will be looking at the finer details of this whole saga.
Although I’m sure that the main thrust of these accusations against Mr Cachia Caruana is false, the damage has been/is being done.
It’s a PR war and no matter how wrong JPO, and the PL by association, are proved, it’s the PN that is looking like a sinking ship to most people out there.
When K.V. was a minister, people flocked t5o his door to pay – if I remember correctly – LM50 to be able to purchase a TV set.
What we were never told was where those LM50 ended up.
Where they passed on to the treasury or did they end in someone’s pocket? If the latter in whose pocket?
Members of the old MLP but militating in the new movement try to paint themselves whiter than white but they still have a lot of expalining to do.
These accusations and counter-accusations are indeed confusing people in general.
The damage caused by the vicious JPOS, spiteful Mugliett and immature Debono is now beyond repair.
I think it would be more practical for the PM to call for general elections AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and in the meantime start reaching out seriously for the ‘lost sheep’.
Impersonal party emails sent to all and sundry are not too effective either in rallying the troops, especially when they end up being sent to Labour shadow ministers too.
People in politics in Malta have a huge problem.
They operate and manoeuver in a country the size of a small town.
Everybody practically knows everybody else or, at least, a close relative.
Therefore, when one of them purports to prove that another politician attempted to “feather his own nest” and cites Karmenu Vella as a prime witness, the national reaction is one of scorn and incredulity.
It just cannot be anything else but.
Let us for argument’s sake believe what Karmenu Vella said about RCC. How can one consider that as being in any way evidence to prove Jeffrey’s allegations? It’s beyond ridiculous.