Electrogas director and shareholder Paul Apap Bologna transferred $200,000 to Yorgen Fenech’s 17 Black using an almost identical offshore structure. 

The Times of Malta has revealed that Apap Bologna is the owner of Kittiwake Limited, which is linked to a money-laundering investigation connected to Fenech and the Panama Papers scandal, that also involves former Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi. 

Fenech and Apap Bologna were both directors and shareholders in the Electrogas project, which has been linked to government corruption and could even be the motive behind the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Both Kittiwake and 17 Black are based in Ajman free zone in the United Arab Emirates. Apap Bologna opened Kittiwake in 2015 just two months after Fenech opened up 17 Black. Over the same period, Mizzi and Schembri also took over their Panama companies.

Apap Bologna’s Kittiwake transferred the  $200,000 to 17 Black-linked company Wings Investments.  Days before, a company, EN3 Projects, transferred $300,000 to the same company. 17 Black was changed to Wings Development soon after.

It is believed that the funds could be related to Fenech’s plans to replicate the Electrogas project in Bangladesh, as first revealed by Lovin Malta. Fenech had suggested to Noor Bank that the funds were related to such a project and involved Apap Bologna. 

The report notes that Apap Bologna had told the public inquiry that he had no knowledge of the project.

The ElectroGas consortium was selected to build and operate the LNG power station in Delimara back in October 2013, with a deal eventually signed in April 2015 and the project inaugurated two years later.

One of the Labour Party’s main pledges ahead of the 2013 general election, the power station was sold to the public as a way of producing clean energy and improving electricity generation efficiency, allowing the government to significantly slash tariffs.

However, the deal itself has raised eyebrows for several years, especially after the Daphne Project revealed in 2018 that ElectroGas was using one of its partners, Socar, as a middleman, when purchasing LNG, instead of purchasing directly at source.

The Guardian estimated that Socar is paying Shell around $113 million a year for LNG and then selling it to Electrogas for $153 million – pocketing a tidy $40 million in the process. Electrogas then sells the LNG to Enemalta for the same price of $153 million and the gas is then converted into electricity and distributed around Malta.

Energy experts have questioned the logic behind this agreement, arguing that Maltese taxpayers would have stood to save tens of millions of euro had Enemalta agreed to purchase LNG directly from Shell.

Over 200,00 sensitive ElectroGas documents had been leaked to Caruana Galizia in the months leading up to her murder. Matthew Caruana Galizia has suggested that the news that Fenech owns the Dubai company 17 Black, could have resulted in ElectroGas defaulting on government-guaranteed loans worth €600 million, which would have triggered a major economic crisis.

What do you think of the new revelations?