What you reported about Gasol LNG Imports Limited is indeed interesting. A company which was only registered in November 2013, and it’s registered in the UK.

Let it be known that we have no knowledge about this company – its financial situation, its shareholders, directors, and so forth, and that it was not the company which won the Malta bid.

Hey Gary, great work. Love this investigation.

Good observation about Turab Musayev. Yes, I agree that he should be the Socar guy. Here is what I found about him:

1. Person named Turab Musayev on VK – apparently this is a Russian social network similar to Facebook.

http://vk.com/id160091288#/id160091288

The Turab here has a Baku connection, and speaks Azerbaijani, English, Russian and Turkish.

2. Turab Musayev is also on Facebook. One of the pictures on Facebook is the same as on VK, so it must be the same person.

https://www.facebook.com/turab.musayev#!/turab.musayev

3. A LinkedIn account for Turab Musayev, who speaks the same languages as in 1.

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/turab-musayev/1/325/297

So it must be the same person.

I cannot access his details, but his skills include petroleum, banking, capital markets and so on.

4. Your link to Reuters refers to the UK business of Macquarie.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/macquarie-uk-power-expansion-idUSL2N0CJ1I720130328

5. Then I found this, from 2004.

http://transparency.az/transpfiles/klim35.pdf

“LETTER TO COMMITTEE ON FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

Submission of corruption cases on “against Bekhtiyar Gasimov RMB -Teletrade Ltd.”

RMB is acting in arrangement of computer courses and was registered in Ministry of Justice, 24.08,2001.

Teletrade D. Y. International Consulting Ltd. – say it is registered in Hong Kong and presents itself under name of broker in world finance market. But by letters I received from Azerbaijan Republic’s Justice Minstry and Hong Kong state
registration department, it is an illegal organization not registered in both these countries.

According to false documents presented to court later, Teletrade was to arrange education courses on financial markets by RMB and but in reality, for acting in currency markets of Baku, named companies open currency trade center in Baku city, B.Seferoglu, 199 and deal with attraction of customers’ money in that market by deceiving advertisement in mass media.

Contract was signed, 17.01.2002, between I, in person of investor, and Teletrade, through Turab Musayev, former representative of Teletrade in Baku and at the same time founder of RMB. After a short time my investments are lost and both companies mentioned above break contract’s terms and run away from responsibility.

According to inquiries I conducted, it was discovered that there was no legal basis of currency trade center organized by Teletrade-RMB and made a proceeding against this.”

Chris Ripard, I disagree with you. There are sections within the civil service which used to work very well.. Of course there were sections and departments which were very weak and ineffective.

What the PN in government did was to establish mechanisms which allowed for the continuous improvement of the Service and for weaknesses to be addressed. Was it perfect? Far from it but improvements were made.

Instead PL in government has sent the message that merit and competence are irrelevant. What is relevant is whether you have served the political interests of the PL in the past legislature.

More then ever, being a civil servant requires the ability to navigate one’s way through the system to reap maximum benefits with the least effort.

On point 3, who is Turab Musayev?

By rights, he should be the SOCAR rep. But a but of searching shows that there is a person of that name working for Macquarie Bank who are an Australian bank involved in power trading. He is the Asset Manager for their Power Origination and Trading group.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/macquarie-uk-power-expansion-idUSL2N0CJ1I720130328

http://www.macquarie.com/mgl/com

So what is the involvement of Macquarie Bank and why do they have a representative on the board of MPGL? Are they going to finance the project?

On point 4, I can only find two companies related to Gasol on the Companies House website (UK equivalent of the MFSA)

GASOL plc Company No. 05350159
GASOL (COTE D’IVOIRE) LIMITED Company No. 08762827

Both are registered at:
40 NEW BOND STREET
LONDON
W1S 2RX

There is no Gasol LNG Import Limited registered at this address with company number 8762786 with Companies House. However, I called CH and found that the company is registered (formed on 5 Nov 2013), just not listed yet for some reason.

But at present, it’s just a shell by the looks of it.

Why do Maltese women always simper?

Excellent work, Gary.

Some observations:

1. The Malta company is still called Malta Power and Gas Limited. According to LSE AIM statements by Gasol plc, this company will change its name to Electrogas Malta Limited once the project financing is in place.

“ElectroGas intends to rename MPGL “ElectroGas Malta Ltd.” prior to closing the financing for the Project.”

http://hsprod.investis.com/ir/gas/ir.jsp?page=news-item&item=1762588006285312

So we can deduce that the financing is still pending. Gasol plc had also stated that they expect bank financing to the tune of 80%.

2. As you say, we cannot even conclude whether the consortium members have financed the amount of Eur 30 million for the acquisition of MPGL. Unless they paid Eur 3,000 per share, they have only paid Eur 10,000 into the capital of 10,000 shares.

3. Who is Gerhard Benner, one of the new directors of MPGL? By deduction, he should be representing Siemens Project Ventures, but I could not find any links between the two on the internet.

4. Who exactly is Gasol LNG Imports Limited? Gasol plc is not one of the new shareholders of MPGL – instead, there is Gasol LNG Imports Limited. Were we not told that the bidder was Gasol plc?

According to public announcements to the LSE AIM issued by Gasol plc over the past few months, Gasol LNG Imports is one of three divisions of Gasol plc. In an announcement dated 30 May 2014 about the signing of a gas agreement with the Volta River Authority, Gasol plc refers to Gasol LNG Imports Limited as a subsidiary. But this subsidiary is not mentioned anywhere in Gasol plc’s interim report of 30 September 2013 or in their annual report of 31 March 2013.

So, is Gasol LNG Imports Limited 100% owned by Gasol plc, or are there any third party minorities, and if yes, who are they?

Gasol LNG Imports Limited shares the same UK registered address with Gasol plc, so it must be a UK registered company.

So if Gasol plc is a ‘cash shell’ without any cash or business, one can only imagine what Gasol LNG Imports Limited looks like financially.

Don’t bother. There are no African people in it.

And what exactly was the progress made in the previous two decades, please? Do you call private secretariats doing all the work while the jobsworths continued to do FA progress? Oh, I forgot – we had e-government too = still less work for 40k jobsworths. Progress? Yeah, right.

My guess is that this was one of many others produced. Heritage Malta is clearly in a mess, I pity the few decent workers who are still there, trying to survive.