You HAVE TO read this. And then you just have to ask whether Mario Vella and Joseph Muscat are stark, raving mad. No wonder the French and Italian power companies pulled out.
This is the transcript of the lead-in to a programme broadcast on Australian national radio (ABC). The discussion topic is ‘Doing Business Abroad: Ethical Dilemmas’, and Shiv Nair – now special consultant to the prime minister of Malta, to Malta’s energy minister and to Malta Enterprise – is the subject.
It speaks for itself, and after reading it, you just have to conclude that the individuals who the electorate has put in charge of Malta are either outright nuts or plain corrupt. There is no other explanation.
Consider the risks to Malta’s reputation of having this man representing the Malta government and trying to broker deals for it.
Lunatics.
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ABC – Australia
Doing Business Abroad: Ethical Dilemmas
– show transcript –
Sunday 15 July 2001 9:00AM
There’s money to be made in the poorest countries, where the big western firms compete for development projects.
These are often ‘high risk environments’, where local corruption can destroy business reputations. Many countries now outlaw the paying of bribes to foreign officials.
So how is a bribe distinguishable from a harmless ‘commission’?
Hello, I’m Nicole Johnston, and you’re listening to Background Briefing on Radio National.
Some companies rely for their survival on winning overseas development contracts, and they have to adapt constantly to a wide range of business environments from the clean to the most tainted.
Often, the easiest thing to do is to hire agents familiar with the local scene, agents who can smooth the way through local hierarchies and bureaucracies, to provide a critical edge over competitors.
Smoothing the way could mean paying ‘commissions’ or ‘facilitation fees’ to gain access to important people or information.
The old adage, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’, can be practical and acceptable advice in Rome, but in the transnational business world, it can be extremely damaging to your reputation outside Rome.
Today, Background Briefing can reveal how one pioneering Australian company, a company that relies on overseas development projects for its livelihood, has run the risk of being banned from competing for World Bank funded projects, because of the company’s association with a blacklisted agent.
That company is the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, or SMEC. The SMEC groups contains several entities, including SMEC Holdings, which is the parent company, SMEC Operations, and SMEC Developments.
Internal invoices, memos and emails from the SMEC group show how it has sought to use the agent, Mr Pradeep Nair, to help bid for a long list of projects. Pradeep Nair specialises in projects in the Central Asian countries of the former Soviet Union, also known as CIS countries.
A senior SMEC Manager, who can’t be identified, has confirmed the company’s association with the banned agents. To protect the Manager’s identity, the interview has been recreated, using an actor.
Manager: SMEC certainly employed an agent called Pradeep Nair to assist with projects in old CIS countries. He was supposed to have very good contacts in Georgia.
Nicole Johnston: How do you know that they hired Nair?
Manager: I’ve seen payment invoices submitted by Pradeep Nair’s company for services to SMEC, for consultancy work in CIS countries.
Nicole Johnston: When did you see these?
Manager: Oh, around the middle of last year.
Nicole Johnston: And what sort of agent was Pradeep Nair?
Manager: He was an Anglo Indian, currently in London; he had a lot of influence, and has been debarred by the World Bank, and the debarring is permanent.
Nicole Johnston: What makes you think that SMEC employed Nair after he’d been debarred by the Bank?
Manager: Basically, I found out by the scuttlebutt the project manager was complaining about the calls he was getting from Pradeep Nair, who wanted prompt payment of his exorbitant fees. I’ve also seen copies of emails where SMEC proposed to associate with Pradeep Nair, or use his services in Central Air.
Nicole Johnston: Why would SMEC hire an agent like Pradeep Nair?
Manager: They were desperate to win projects and find someone who could make the appropriate arrangements for them. They were desperate to win because the traditional work in East Asia is drying up, and SMEC needs to find new markets, new geographical areas, and Pradeep Nair has contacts in these places.
Nicole Johnston: Pradeep Nair was debarred, or blacklisted, by the World Bank in April, 1999. This makes him ineligible to work on any project funded by the World Bank. Any company who employs a blacklisted agent to work on a World Bank funded project risks losing the contracts and being debarred itself from any future World Bank funded projects.
According to documents obtained by Background Briefing, Pradeep Nair was on the payroll of SMEC Operations. A SMEC invoice from February/March 2000, almost a year after he was blacklisted, shows Pradeep Nair was owed $53,600 for consultancy work in former Soviet countries. The invoice doesn’t show when the work was carried out; it may have been before Pradeep Nair was blacklisted.
The Chairman and Chief Executive of SMEC Holdings, the parent company, at the time of that invoice, was Jack Boniface. He says he introduced Pradeep Nair to the company.
Jack Boniface: Oh yes, look I certainly introduced him to SMEC. He was in Australia on holidays and saw me and he gave a pretty good story of his contacts in the Central Asian countries, the old CIS countries, and I gave his name to our Operations people as someone I thought who could have influence there and who could assist us in winning work.
Nicole Johnston: How long ago was this?
Jack Boniface: I think this would have been three, three and a half years ago. I wasn’t aware that Pradeep Nair was on the World Bank’s debarred list until I think either October or November 2000.
Nicole Johnston: This was eighteen months after the agent had been blacklisted. Jack Boniface is no longer CEO of the SMEC parent company or Chairman of the Board, following a restructure last year. But he remains CEO of one arm of SMEC, SMEC Developments. Jack Boniface says the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation should have nothing more to do with Pradeep Nair.
Jack Boniface: To put it very bluntly, we just shouldn’t, and we should get out of any arrangements we’ve got with him, because whatever caused him to be debarred could well wash over onto SMEC.
Nicole Johnston: Jack Boniface says after he introduced Pradeep Nair to SMEC he had nothing more to do with Nair.
Jack Boniface: The only agents that I used to control were the ones where we had long-term contract with them, that’s contracts of a year or more, and where we paid them a retainer. The agents that were engaged on a project-by-project basis were really the responsibility of the Operations people.
Nicole Johnston: Background Briefing spoke to the current Chief Operations Officer for the SMEC parent company, Peter Busbridge, in its North Sydney office. Mr Busbridge said SMEC has never had a business relationship with agent Nair, and in fact he’d never heard of him.
But Background Briefing has documents that suggest SMEC Operations did intend on using Pradeep Nair to win World Bank funded projects, well after he’d been added to the Bank’s blacklist.
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http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/doing-business-abroad-ethical-dilemmas/3491574#transcript
Why aren’t we seeing any of this in our newspapers? Not one paper has bothered reporting this extremely worrying story.
It is essential for the Opposition and Maltese media to take this up. Forget the Labour Party – this damages MALTA.
Certainly our international reputation as a country is being systematically destroyed.
Assuming the situation in Malta does escalate to the point of raising World Bank eyebrows, who’d get blacklisted?
It would seem that on the basis of the above Enemalta could get blacklisted through its association with Nair.
The World Bank does not police all transactions everywhere in the world. It concerns itself solely with projects that involve World Bank finance. That means it will only blacklist companies and individuals who violate its guidelines on procurement on projects where World Bank-finance is involved.
Nair’s permanent debarment from World Bank-financed projects extends to any organisation, company or other entity in which he has a controlling interest. The material effect is those organisations, companies or entities will not have access to World Bank finance or be able to participate in any project financed in full or in part by the World Bank.
Enemalta is not involved in any World Bank-financed projects, so it will not be scrutinised by the World Bank nor will it appear on the World Bank’s black list.
The same applies to any individuals or companies that attempt to do business with, through or around Enemalta, that involves fraud, corruption or dubious commission payments of any sort. Since the action does not involve World Bank finance, the World Bank does not scrutinise that action.
That doesn’t mean that Malta is safe. Reliance on someone who is blacklisted by the World Bank and reliance on finance from dubious sources puts Malta firmly back in the pariah camp.
Muscat isn’t worried. He doesn’t need World Bank finance.
Why Malta’s government, government agencies, companies and corporations should steer clear of Shiv Nair.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/doing-business-abroad-ethical-dilemmas/3491574
It’s very hard to segment in your own life, or in the life of an organisation, behaviour which is routinely engaged in, and just pretend it is for special occasions, without it seeping back into the culture of the organisation and actually becoming part of what you really are.
And if you run a company which says to the world at large that it believes in honesty and integrity yet you secretly engage in bribery, then you in a sense betrayed the things that you stand for and give good grounds for creating a climate of cynicism.
Here is an interesting analysis of recent events in the Democratic People’s Republic of Malta (DPRM).
In September 2013, Ms. Sai Mizzi Liang, wife of Malta’s energy minister, has been given an employment as “Special Envoy (” equivalent to “Ambassador,” they said) by Dr. Joseph Muscat, the Prime Minister of the DPRM.
In July 2013, Dr. Muscat has also employed Mr. Nair as an Energy Consultant.
In substance, this means that Ms. Mizzi Liang and Mr. Nair are related by employment to the same person, pursuing the same goals and objectives, same interests.
We have been told by the Clowns in Castille (the office of the Prime Minister of the DPRM) that Ms. Mizzi Liang will be working in the Far East, seeking to attract business to Malta. That region includes Australasia.
This website has now revealed how Mr. Shiv Nair is permanently debarred by the World Bank for FRAUD AND CORRUPTION.
But if Ms. Mizzi Liang has a such a working association with Mr. Nair via the same employer, which reputable company in any part of the world is going to do any business with Ms. Mizzi Liang, knowing the connections with Mr. Nair?
Rather than being an Ambassador for business to Malta, Ms. Mizzi Liang is more likely to be a liability to Malta because any person or company seeking to do business with Malta via her and Mr. Nair will have their name hanged out on the World Bank blacklist for everyone to see. Which person of repute is going to risk that?
Wow, how much did they say we are paying for this disservice to our country and to potentially serious foreign corporations?
And did they say that she was the BEST QUALIFIED FOR THE JOB?
Are those Clowns in Castille nuts, or are they nuts?
Konrad Mizzi had nothing to do with Sai Mizzi Liang’s appointment because he heard about it from her when they discussed it as a family matter.
Sai Mizzi Liang isn’t saying anything and nobody is asking her anything, so we don’t know anything from her, either.
Joseph Muscat says he had nothing to with the job because he was in China when Sai Mizzi Liang’s contract was negotiated.
Chris Cardona, the minister responsible for Malta Enterprise, didn’t know about the appointment because he had nothing to do with it, but he’s sure that everything was done correctly.
Malta Enterprise’s board of directors didn’t know about the appointment until it had happened.
Mario Vella, chairman and CEO of Malta Enterprise, says he didn’t make the appointment himself and he was in China with Muscat when Muscat wasn’t negotiating the contract because he was in China.
None of these people have heard of video conferencing.
Shiv Nair, or one of his various aliases, engaged by Malta Enterprise as a consultant might have been in China too when the contract was being negotiated, but we don’t know because nobody told us where he was at the time so he might have been in Malta.
It certainly suits his purpose to have Mrs energy minister based in China.
This shocking story should be taken up at once by the Nationalist Party media. It should be on all their newspapers, online, radio and TV.
The students’ stipends and all other topics fade to nothing when compared to the enormity of this story.
They should be harping on about it each and every day continuously without stopping.
We know where the interests of the Chinese lie as a global trading bloc of their own. We also have no doubts why Shiv Nair is in it.
Yet are we asking the most important question: What’s really in it for Joseph Muscat & Co?
On the best of days, I refuse to believe that any politician is a bona fide bonus paterfamilias doing what he or she does out of some outdated notion of patriotism. Oh no! I go by the definition in the film the ‘Hunt for Red October’: “I am a politician which means I am a thief and a liar and when I’m not kissing babies, I’m stealing their lollipops”.
Now kick up the sediment in already murky waters by bringing in shady characters such as Shiv Nair, the MLP old guard and several secretive and backhanded (and probably pre-electoral) agreements such as the China MOU, with many more yet to come, and I am pretty sure that this will go way beyond repayment for the simple bankrolling of the PL.
There is way too much to be gained here for nobody to be pocketing anything.
Well, Alfred Sant did speak about pacts with the devil.