Updated | Backroom deal over Sliema beach leaves Marsa Sports Club fuming

Corrected as per print version

The committee of the Marsa Sports Club is up in arms after having lost the leasehold it had on a stretch of rocky beach at Tigné, Sliema, after 90 years of ownership.

The MSC claims it was not informed by the former minister for lands, Jason Azzopardi,  that 60% of Tigné Beach was being passed on to student tourism group NSTS, who in the recent decades enjoyed an operational agreement of the same parcel of land.

For his part, Azzopardi claimed that Marsa's operational agreement with NSTS was illegal.

The land in question is owned by the State, but for the past 90 years it has been leased to the Marsa Sports Club and Sliema's Malta Union Club. In another agreement, NSTS signed an operational agreement with MSC and MUC to grant access to English-language tourists and holders of the NSTS travel card.

Marsa Sports Club chairman Ralph Asciak claims, however, that the arrangement for NSTS to be allocated the 4,156 square metres of land came while both the MSC and the Union Club were in negotiations with the commissioner for lands for the renewal of the lease at Tigné Beach.

The terms of the lease were always being changed by the government, the main area of contention being the proposed granting of a substantial part of the beach to NSTS. "We strove to retain possession of the whole beach, and the Union Club was purportedly backing this line of action, which was supposed to safeguard both clubs' rights and traditions," Asciak wrote in an editorial for the Marsa Sports Club's newsletter.

But Asciak alleges that during the negotiation process with the government, the Union Club dealt with the government "behind MSC's backs" by stating that the club was prepared to give up the piece of land it sub-leased to NSTS.

The lease contract between NSTS and government was signed in the weeks leading up to the 9 March elections.

Contacted by MaltaToday, Asciak confirmed that he had been informed that the agreement was signed. "I can confirm the agreement was signed, even though the Marsa Sports Club never received official communication by government that the agreement had been finalised," he said.

In April 2010, the MSC wrote to the Commissioner of Lands informing him of its intentions to renew the lease at Tigné Beach. The lease was to expire five months later. According to Asciak, in a meeting with then-parliamentary secretary Jason Azzopardi, the MSC were led to believe that both Marsa and the Union Club would get a 49-year term, should the Union Club affiliate itself with the Malta Council for Sports.

In August 2010, the Lands Commissioner verbally confirmed that the lease would be extended for eight years, but a €15,140 cheque covering a six-month period of rent was returned a month later un-cashed.

Then in 2011, Marsa and the Union Club informed the Lands Commissioner they were prepared to renew their management agreement with NSTS for the sub-lease of the beach, on the premise that NSTS would furnish a bank guarantee. In April 2011, it was agreed that the land be contracted to the clubs for €50,000, with NSTS being granted the right of first refusal.

But much to the clubs' surprise, three months later they were informed that the government had reconsidered its decision and decided that the beach concession should be divided between the Malta Sports Club and the Union Club on one side and NSTS on the other.

Further meetings running into September 2012 ensued, where this time it was suggested again that Marsa and the Union Club would get the lease of the whole area, on the condition that they not object to the government's plans to expropriate part of the land for a public car park.

But the government's final decision saw the beach split between the clubs and NSTS: 2,318 square metres for MSC and the Union Club and 4,156 square metres for NSTS, with a common area of 110 square metres.

Despite the clubs' complaints that the procedure adopted by government - to simply grant the land to NSTS - was irregular, the Commissioner of Lands informed them that government had a right to alter and change the lease extension as it deemed fit.

In comments to MaltaToday, Jason Azzopardi said the government wanted "justice" to be done with NSTS. Azzopardi said that NSTS deserved some form of compensation after land owned by NSTS owner Francis Stivala was expropriated by the State. "Secondly, the clubs should have never leased the land to NSTS and were effectively compounding an illegality," Azzopardi said, in reference to the operational agreement. He insisted that the government could give the land to whomever it wanted as compensation.