Government crony receives quarter of a million euros for lighting up Palace courtyard

Raymond Vella & Co Ltd, the company owned by government crony Raymond Vella, who carried out all the lighting jobs for the Labour Party in its general election campaign with no evidence that he ever invoiced them, has received close to a quarter of a million euros for lighting up a courtyard at the Palace in Valletta.

Since March 2013, Vella has taken the almost all government lighting projects. They include lighting the façade of the Prime Minister’s Office, for which his company was paid €300,000 for a thoroughly bad job which upset people and damaged the stonework.

Raymond Vella was also paid €45,000 to carry out the lighting work at Villa Francia, where the Prime Minister’s wife holds court.

Despite there being a tender process in every case, these are in reality direct orders which use tendering as a front. Raymond Vella does not submit the lowest offer, but even when price is stated as the basis for selection, he still gets the order.

This happened again with the tender for the Palace courtyard lighting, a thoroughly unnecessary job devised solely to funnel money in the direction of a government crony. As you can see here (click on the individual tabs) there were three tender offers, and despite the selection criteria being stated clearly as the lowest price, the job went to Raymond Vella who not only had the highest price by far, but actually got the job at a far higher price than he quoted in tender. How did that happen?

AID Ltd quoted €168,566, Faro Group quoted €195,993 and Raymond Vella quoted €224,864 but got the job at €237,199.