Fuel-buying minutes ‘were only my notes’

Enemalta’s former chief financial officer has admitted that hand­written papers shown in a damning audit report as minutes were his, but claimed they were just his own working notes. Pippo Pandolfino lambasted the conclusions released earlier this month by Auditor General Anthony Mifsud and said neither he nor any of the former members of the committee were interviewed by the National Audit Office. “Had they done so, perhaps the misunderstandings on their part would have been avoided much earlier,” Mr Pandolfino told Times of Malta. Mr Pandolfino attended all meetings of the corporation’s Fuel Procurement Committee (FPC) between 2004 and 2009. The NAO report was very critical of the way the FPC used to conduct its business between 2008 and 2010 and underlined the fact that the minutes of the meetings at the time “lacked the most rudi­mentary level of detail and bore no information relating to meeting discussions and the decision-making process”. In its report, the NAO criticised the practices adopted by the FPC raising serious questions about lack of record keeping, proper testing for inferior quality fuel, and lack of proper records on who took decisions. A copy of a...