Filed by someone known to me:
Much has been written about the Mozura Wind Park deal through which Enemalta purchased the project from a Dubai based company called Cidifex for the price of €10.3 million, 18 days after Cidifex had purchased the project for €2.9 million with a resultant profit of € 7.4 million.
When a company buys another, particularly when it has a history, they both go through a process of due diligence. This is the corporate equivalent of the searching done during the purchase of a property, that ensures that the seller really owns what they are selling, but also goes further to look at the accounts, the valuation of the business, debtors, creditors, risks and so on. It usually involves assessing audited accounts related to the business, updated management accounts information, confirmation of physical and intangible assets and involves accountants, auditors and lawyers, as well as possible subject matter experts related to the business of the company being acquired. It is a complex process that usually takes anywhere between a number of weeks and months.
This process would have identified that the owner, Cidifex Ltd, would have acquired from the Spanish firm Fersa Renovables. Due to the length of time that a due diligence takes, it is most likely in fact that the due diligence process would have started prior to Cidifex having acquired the shares from Fersa Renovables and thus that the purchasing of the project was intentionally structured through a 3rd party company, Cidifex, with financing from 17 Black.
The only other possibility is that Cidifex is a coincidental part of the process — “yeah, right” — and that the sale process started and was completed, including the due diligence, within 18 days. If that was the case then, it would be strange for Cidifex to start the process of seeking and finding a buyer starting on the day of purchase, unless it knew who its buyer was going to be. In that case, we can only assume that the due diligence process was undertaken so quickly that it could only have been very superficial, something for which the Board of Enemalta are responsible.
Lining up the advisers, lawyers, accountants, auditors and business specialists and getting them to make themselves available within that time frame is miraculous. You can also see from the number of trips to Montenegro undertaken by disgraced former minister Konrad Mizzi, together with the Enemalta board Secretary, Aaron Mifsud Bonnici, who just happens to be Mizzi’s personal lawyer, who Mizzi had ensured was appointed as Board Secretary of Enemalta. Unless it was all pre-planned.
The structure of the Mozura Wind Farm deal is a classic case of layering to syphon fonds into a separate entity for tax avoidance and hiding of interested parties. The €7.4 million profit made by Cidifex on the deal was split between the owner of Cidifex, the Azeri-British national who was at the time, by coincidence no doubt, a board member of Electrogas and Yorge Fenech’s 17 Black which had received € 4.6 million in “profit”. As we know, 17 Black was the Dubai company declared as being the source of funds to be transferred to Konrad Mizzi’s and Keith Schembri’s Panamanian companies.