GUEST POST: Anyone who thinks that no corruption is involved is not, to quote Mrs Konrad Mizzi, “of normal IQ”
Muscat’s meeting with Liu Qitao in China earlier this week should have set alarm bells ringing. He met Liu Qitao before meeting China’s prime minister to sign an MOU that “covers all aspects of Malta’s economy” and speaks of infrastructure projects in various sectors.
Muscat next met representatives of China’s state-owned banks to discuss project finance. We can assume that China’s EXIM bank was one of them, if not the only one.
China Communist Party secretary Liu Qitao is president and executive director of China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), the company Muscat has engaged to conduct a “free” feasibility study for a Gozo bridge and which he now says will take on several other infrastructure projects in Malta – just as it is doing in various Third World countries, mainly in Africa.
This company is blacklisted by the World Bank and by four other development banks, including the European Bank for Construction and Development, for corruption and fraud. CCCC’s intermediary is Shiv Nair, permanently blacklisted by the World Bank for fraud and corruption and, notoriously, engaged by Muscat as a consultant.
Liu Qitao became executive director of CCCC after it was blacklisted but the company’s corrupt practices have not stopped under his watch. On the contrary, they have continued apace and he seems to be directly involved. There are numerous reports of graft-ridden projects from China to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Jamaica, Guyana, Kenya and others, that all involving CCCC.
Take the case of Kenya, for instance. President Kenyatta contracted CCCC to build a railway from Mombasa on the coast eastwards to Malaba on the Ugandan border, linking Kenya to Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan. The rail link will be useful for China, which needs an efficient land-sea link to transport Africa’s natural resources outwards and to flood the continent with Chinese goods.
The rail contract has been heavily criticised and opposed in Kenya because of the way it was awarded (no open call for tenders, lack of transparency) and because of the cost – triple the standard rate BEFORE the inevitable works variations and additional costs of work-in-progress which inflate the final cost of a project. The project was to be financed by a USD13.5 billion loan from China’s EXIM bank, with Kenya Ports Authority, a state corporation, guaranteeing the first USD2billion.
CCCC got the railway contract by dubious means and in violation of the Kenyan government’s official and legal mandate. There was no open call for tenders, no competitive selection, no benchmarking, and no transparency at any point in the decision-taking process. Kenya’s Attorney General, Githu Muigai, raised concerns about the integrity of the contract as it was single-sourced, i.e. without a competitive process.
The Dock Workers Union and two individuals sued Kenya’s government to stop the project going ahead, calling it “arbitrary, capricious, whimsical, against [our] rights as Kenyan citizens, and an obstructive waste of public funds.” The judge hearing the case certified it as “urgent”.
CCCC’s collusion in the dubious contractual process is corrupt in itself, and the inflated cost of the contract and the way it was awarded also suggests that graft was involved. Liu Qitao cannot plead ignorance, as none of it could have happened without his direct knowledge.
Liu was aware that CCCC was contracted without a competitive process and, as an engineer of considerable international experience, he was aware that the quoted contract cost was three times the standard rate for a project of that type. He would also have been implicitly aware of illicit payments and other forms of bribery that helped secure the contract. He speaks at anti-corruption conferences. He knows rather a lot about how corrupt practices work.
When the Dock Workers Union and the two individuals took their government to court, Liu Qitao met Kenya’s President Kenyatta in a bid to keep CCCC’s engagement on track. Publicly, Liu said the project will be finished on time and to a high standard – conditions which should be met routinely, and not by exception. He then offered Chinese university scholarships for 30-50 Kenyan students and moved smoothly into saying CCCC is interested in more infrastructure commissions, including Lamu port and urbanisation.
Liu’s meeting with Kenyatta was in November 2013. Six months later, in May 2014, Construction Week online reported “…[Lamu Port]…Under dubious terms, China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) won a tender to build a super port in a UNESCO-protected island on Kenya’s upper east coast” and that “Chinese investors aim to build roughly 20 skyscrapers in [an enclave near the capital] which is expected to become a shopping destination for products from China and other countries.”
One of three similar developments planned around Nairobi, that skyscraper enclave will be a $750 million “Chinese-controlled economic zone” that will include luxury residences designed to match the “glamour of Dubai”.
Joseph Muscat’s talk of turning Malta into the next Dubai – he means building skyscrapers – and building a free trade zone for Chinese goods, and his engaging blacklisted China Communications Construction Company in major infrastructure projects, should be closely questioned. There are parallels with what CCCC is doing in Kenya and elsewhere.
Anyone who thinks that no corruption is involved is not, to quote Mrs Konrad Mizzi, “of normal IQ”.
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At best, PM Muscat thinks that this is a free lunch, which as we know, does not exist.
China’s diplomacy is colonialism by other means: gradual encroachment to the point of rendering dependent.
One key factor has to be borne in mind: China is not a democracy and therefore does not have to think in terms of finite terms-in-office.
He doesn’t think it is a free lunch. He knows he wasn’t elected on merit.
Muscat’s roadmap. Never was this country’s trust so betrayed.
And yet not even one constituted body or association dares to challenge Dr. Muscat on his land reclamation dream and the negative result this will have on the tourist industry.
The same can be said for very high buildings which it seems he intends to build in tiny Malta. What our know-all Prime Minister is forgetting is that in our case such buildings would affect the sunlight in most of our sea resorts.
Muscat’s patented skin-cancer cure.
He’ll have to demolish everything in sight to start.
I don’t think the PN have understood the massive opportunity staring them in the face.
Let’s see, Marsascala, Gzira, Qawra set for clearing of every permanent resident. Good, they’re mostly very Labour.
Kollha jemmnu f’Joseph.
Then there’s ‘land reclamation’ down at the ferries, Grace Borg all for it. Better than St.Petersburg, pity Dalli isn’t the minister anymore.
Give the status of her position and the responsibility it demands, what I find most insulting about Ms Mizzi’s statement is that she quotes her net salary, which is a gross and unforgivable error that employs that low-class argument of “kemm naqbad f’idejja”.
Most of our salaries would be between 15% and 35% lower than they actually are if we had to push that one.
And if her awareness of Maltese tax and revenue culture is so inferior I dread to think what sort of legal and financial tangles she is bound to get wound up in when it comes to negotiating on behalf of us natives on matters of far-reaching economic and financial impact.
Zero points to the “journalists”, including Malta Today’s managing director, who swallowed this hook line and sinker. Don’t they even bother to learn the basics? The Peking duck must have been really very tasty.
actually MD was for Miriam Dalli, but OK
[Daphne – She wasn’t in China with the PM, her MD was.]
It is safe to assume that CCCC will send a few experts who will sound the channel between Malta and Commino and Commino to Gozo and find that it is technically feasible to build the bridge but not economically feasible because by the time it is paid for, it will be time to replace the structure!
Promise delivered (feasible study) but goods are not deliverable.
Case closed.
He does deals with the blacklisted and the corrupt and then talks down to us about integrity. No wonder he is held in no respect in Brussels.
The subjugation of our whole economic policy to China’s Communist Regime is clearly driven by something else other than our common good. Graft is endemic in China and that cost will be added to the loans Malta will have to pay back with interest to China’s banks.
And the Chinese will not give a damn holding a knife to our collective throats. No? Well, just look at the way they treat their own.
If I may, every cent of Chinese investment will be nothing but that state laundering its graft money.
All contents of the MOU point at ‘luxurious real estate’. The exact opposite of what the country needs to upgrade existing. When the spike hits, we’ll be pushed out of the market. The moment banks sense trouble, they’ll call everyone in, and then the glut will leave its effect on values.
And that’s when we’re had by the balls. Industry, military of course, m’hemmx x’taghmel. Come da manuale.
Muscat subscribes to multiplying GDP growth by frenetic building, that was his clear agenda all along. The rest just fell into place. He calls it internal demand.
If there’s a glut, what demand?
There’s this shared jurisdiction thingy which went under the radar. Need we say what happens to any differing opinion? It will be against the national interest.
That includes any truth with figures and established international parameter data gathering. China just cannot cover the rot anymore, take it elsewhere.
If anyone wants to map the takeover, just follow the land grab taking place these past few years, hundreds of acres ODZ, mainly the pristine south coast.
It was where all the PN’s problems flared.
Saviour and the AD elite will never know what hit us. But they’ll be too stoned, hopefully.
Keep in mind the Chinese will not consider anything other than gated communities.
The rest remains open to market risk. They will double cross our wealth, just look at China as one major money sinkhole where the only remedial factor is virgin territory, if it’s sovereign territory, so much better.
The speculator’s dream.
I wonder, Daphne, what answers you would get if you had to put the question: “Is Shiv Nair dangerous?”
Some people find it hard to connect the dots.
In my opinion, there was never anyone who singly and together with the group that supported his inroads, was more evil in intention for Malta’s present and Malta’s future.
People who care only about the cash in their pockets and accounts, and not an iota about the Maltese.
The fools who support them, like Kenely and all the others we now know about, are the new betrayers of Malta.
Of course it could only have been done with a non-entity like Muscat in the first place.
Someone totally starved of social standing.
A prime sucker for such a scam.
Jahasra Malta.
I think Muscat’s behaviour with China reflects his upbringing. He was brought up with daddy’s financial support right into his adulthood.
I think he unconsciously expects this kind of support in all aspects of his life, and he now needs a “daddy” for Malta and thinks China will do.
It really shows his immaturity really in thinking that China – or any other state for this matter – would just provide the cash without expecting anything in return. No help comes without any strings attached.
Simon Busuttil was so right when he exclaimed that Muscat would take us “gass down ghal gol-hajt”. Its actually happening even faster than anyone expected.
Of course he’s even faster, he’s got loans to repay.
Persons of my age remember the famous Mintoff-China loan so called free of any interest and which was attached to the value of gold and then when time was up payment the value of gold was; oh boy. But we paid no interest, we were only skinned alive.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-07-17/news/uninvited-media-free-to-pay-their-own-way-to-accompany-pm-5879201793/
CCCC was blacklisted by the World Bank for fraud and corruption.
Tanzania blacklisted CCCC for 10 years. Liu Qitao – Muscat’s friend – could only get a contract in Tanzania by bribing officials.
And so that’s what they did: http://www.trust.org/item/20140715205110-works/
Jozef – comments, please.
Kenya: Exclusive – How Italian Firm Was Shut Out of Kenya’s SGR Project
BY JOE ADAMA, 21 JUNE 2014
Controversy is flaring up once more over the construction of the multibillion-shilling Standard Gauge Railway Project, with far-reaching implications for transparency and a genuinely competitive bidding process.
The highly experienced Italian firm TEAM Group has protested that it was ruthlessly locked out of a key Kenya Railways Corporation tender bidding process by top insiders working for cartels.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201406231584.html?viewall=1