Another shocker: Electrogas Malta Ltd’s share capital is just €10,000

The total share capital of Electrogas Malta Ltd is €10,000. This is despite the fact that the shareholders include some of Malta’s big-business interests, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, and a Siemens subsidiary.

This means that the shareholders are not investing any of their own capital in the power station, which is to be funded entirely by bank loans of €450 million, much of it lent at political gun-point by the Bank of Valletta, and with the government of Malta standing as guarantor for €360 million of that extraordinary debt.

This means that if Electrogas Malta cannot make good on its debt and defaults for whatever reason, the government of Malta will have to come up with €360 million of Maltese people’s taxes to pay for the debts incurred by GEM Holdings Ltd (the Maltese business interests), SOCAR Trading (Azerbaijan) and Siemens Projects Ventures in their capacity as shareholders of Electrogas Malta Ltd.

One of the original lead shareholders, Gasol, was technically bankrupt already when it signed with the government of Malta, and has since had to pull out and transfer its shares to the other shareholders. I revealed the bankruptcy on this website last July, some days after the Minister for the Economy, who unknown to us was then staying for free at a Portomaso flat loaned to him by one of the ultimate beneficial owners of Electrogas Malta Ltd, said that Gasol is fine and that he has no worries about its financial situation.

A few hours after I broke the news (which I had obtained simply by looking at Gasol’s published financial statements), Electrogas Malta Ltd released a statement saying that Gasol was pulling out.

The corruption is just beyond belief. Muscat’s criminal outfit bought this power station proposal lock, stock and barrel, even though it is completely unworkable – which raises questions as to why they did so – and then to save their political necks they held a gun to the Bank of Valletta’s head. When even that was not enough, they put up €360 million in Maltese public money and assets to guarantee the astronomical debts of this private company, in a desperate attempt at getting it to deliver so that they can save their own corrupt political lives.