Minister’s canvasser asked for a cut on FTS tenders, court hears

The Education Minister’s chief canvasser, Edward Caruana, asked a building contractor working on a new government school for a three per cent cut on payments and a full container of tiles, the court was told yesterday. Mr Caruana, employed at the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools, the government school-building agency, was on Tuesday indicted on charges of corruption, bribery, falsification of documents and abuse of public funds following claims made by the agency’s ex-CEO Philip Rizzo more than a year-and-a-half ago. Taking the witness stand yesterday, Mr Rizzo recounted how he was asked by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo to go and sort out the problems at the FTS and said the minister had warned him about Mr Caruana. The former FTS CEO, who stepped down from his position last December after having accused Mr Bartolo of trying to dissuade him from reporting the abuse to the police, said that his attention was drawn soon after taking his position. Mr Rizzo said that he started investigating abuses at the FTS when he was presented with invoices of some €25,000 related to a new toilet at a school in Gozo. “No one knew anything about this toilet or how it was commissioned,” he...