In 2012, the Valletta Local Council headed by Mayor Alexiei Dingli awarded up to €1.3 million in public contracts to a notorious drug trafficker called Alan (or Allan) Muscat through his company Waste Collection Ltd. Like many drug traffickers, Alan Muscat laundered his money through legitimate companies in the cleaning and the catering businesses apart from doing the usual money laundering with cars and also potentially opening bank accounts in Dubai.
Alan Muscat uses his brother and father as a front for his companies. His brother, Adrian Muscat, is currently being charged in Court for jacking a Rolls Royce.
The three public tenders awarded to Alan Muscat’s company in 2012 involved the cleaning of the Valletta Commercial Centre, waste collection and additional cleaning of the city. The contracts awarded were significantly more expensive than the bids of other bidders and the Public and were higher by up to 50%. It is also important to note that back then salaries were around 50% less than they are today. Costs were also much lower.
The Mayor was also the chairman of the local council committee awarding these tenders and although these tenders were found to have been awarded unfairly by the Public Contracts Review Board, the decisions by the local council were not overturned.
However, this was not an isolated incident. Waste Collection Ltd kept being awarded public contracts in very unusual and irregular ways after 2012 with public authorities consistently noticing this issue. An audit of the Valletta Local Council had found that Waste Collection Ltd was also given contracts without tender on the basis that the owners of the company live in Valletta.
Waste Collection Ltd. kept receiving tenders from the Valletta Local Council to at least up to 2017. Alexiei Dingli was Valletta mayor from 2008 to 2019.
I sent Alexiei Dingli some questions via email about Waste Collection Ltd, and he surely remembers the company very well, having been the chairman of the committee awarding these contracts. Alexiei Dingli is usually very prompt in replying to questions from the press. He is also someone who persistently tries to present himself in the media, with one of his latest appearances being on Malta’s Shark Tank, where he pitched an AI solution for Malta’s traffic problems that could only be implemented if it received government funding.
He hasn’t come up with a reply until now, which is very unusual of him, but we will get back to him when we get our hands on more documents relating to this scandal, including by issuing various Freedom of Information Requests.
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