Auditor general accuses James Caterers of intimidation
The auditor general has accused catering company James Caterers of trying to intimidate and influence an investigation into a controversial contract at a state home for the elderly. In a letter to the National Audit Office, James Catering Ltd warned it would hold NAO officers personally responsible for any reputational damage from an audit into two tenders linked to the Saint Vincent de Paul facility. The NAO is assessing a 2015 tender that began as a request for meals and a kitchen at the Luqa home and morphed into a second project to extend the facility. It was won by a consortium that includes James Caterers and another firm that forms part of the DB group. The NAO was asked to investigate the multi-million deal by independent MPs Godfrey and Marlene Farrugia. But the Auditor General Charles Deguara claims that the catering firm is trying to influence his work and has written to parliament’s Public Accounts Committee to complain. Writing to Nationalist Party MP Beppe Fenech Adami, the chair of the PAC, Deguara said that after a January meeting with the consortium, he received a legal letter from James Caterers last month that he deems a “contempt of parliamentary...