From Falzon to Louis Galea with love

So the former Labour party deputy leader, now junior minister Michael Falzon has decided to stand by the lands department and saw no point in a criminal inquiry. If I were PM I would have asked him to either decapitate the head of the lands department or else make him offer his resignation.

By now everyone has sort of understood that Mark Gaffarena, from a very well known family from Qormi, has been the fortunate and lucky recipient of land and cash for property which he ably and quite incredibly acquired by chance for a pittance. Even playing lotto does not come that easy.

They say business is all about chance. But really those that make their
profits from taxpayers’ money and free government land are not businessmen but preying and scavenging vultures.

Chance, a mighty dose of it, is of course the only way this could have happened
if you do not believe that Gaffarena was tipped off by someone inside the lands department. I have no proof that he was tipped off. On the other hand it is very difficult to accept that Mark Gaffarena is a ‘walking genius’.

All this of course is pure speculation
but it is also close to impossible to believe that Mark Gaffarena has such telepathic powers that he would know when a segment or section of a private property is to be expropriated.

The day after the story hit the stands Michael Falzon gave a pathetic press conference.

He insisted there was nothing irregular and defended the whole process, stating that the usual protocol had been followed. Well, if he has not been informed he should be told that the public in general believe that this is not the case. Protocol followed, indeed, is what the public is saying.

Most people out there who know what it means to be compensated by the government for expropriation know that something is not quite right.

Expropriation and compensation are never as fast as this. Ask those who really know! Who have been through it.

Gaffarena, it seems, is treated like someone at a McDonalds drive-in. Falzon defended the €1.65 million compensation for the expropriated property of Marco Gaffarena in Valletta as if it was something normal. It was as if the government was paying for a toast and coffee at a bar.

Gaffarena was paid the compensation in cash and lands for half a property
on Old Mint Street that houses the government offices of the Building Industry Consultative Council, where
the chairman is Charles Buhagiar, who has been an architect for Gaffarena and as today’s issue of MaltaToday reports,
is presently representing Gaffarena in a project for an old people’s home, a project in an ODZ (Outside Development Zone).

After receiving compensation in January 2015 for his ownership of a quarter
of the property, Gaffarena purchased another quarter in February and got an expropriation in April.

“There was no political hanky panky...
it was a regular transaction within the parameters of the law,” Falzon said, adding that the government faced eviction from the property by 2028 and therefore had to expropriate it.

At this stage, we are wondering whether eviction in 2028 demands such drastic, and expeditious action.

If there was no hanky panky there surely was something unusually and amazingly special about the rapidity and smoothness of this expropriation.

Parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon also said that no criminal investigation was necessary.

On Friday, after the PN came out baying for Justice, Falzon surprisingly issued a statement agreeing that the case should be seen to by the auditor general.

In his first press conference he said
“If we were to view this as a criminal
case, then we might as well throw all businessmen into jail”. Falzon denied that Gaffarena could have been the beneficiary of inside information.

But how can Falzon be sure of this?

Then Falzon made his most absurd comment in the case: “The only reason it made the news was because of his surname,” Falzon said of Gaffarena – whose petrol pump station in Qormi is associated with a number of illegalities that were only recently sanctioned under the Labour administration.

“We did not know when Gaffarena began negotiations to buy the rest of the property. It could have been ten years ago for all we knew. The government decided to buy the land in 2014 and Gaffarena’s decision to buy the rest of the property is not something that falls into our remit: we don’t look at private business deals.”

Falzon must either be completely naïve or not here. The fact that we are talking about Gaffarena justifies that we take a closer look at this case. “The land was realistically valued at €822,500 by architects appointed by the Government Property Division. We’re not private estate agents and negotiate according to the fair market value. If Gaffarena had originally bought the land for a cheaper price than the market value, then he simply made a good business deal.”

Indeed! Was it ethical? Or does this government not bother about ethics?

The fact that Gaffarena made a killing of €685,000 in profit in just two months, thanks to the fast-track expropriation of his Valletta property, is of no concern to Michael Falzon.

The Government Property Division (GPD) paid Gaffarena €1.65 million in land and cash for half-ownership of a property on Old Mint Street, Valletta. And the cherry in it is that the choice and location of the land given to Gaffarena is also divinely chosen – in some cases, the selection of the land in exchange for this property was bang next to Gaffarena’s property.

I wonder is there some kind of pick and choose policy at lands? What I mean to say, if my property is expropriated will the government, I mean lands, compensate me with government land next to some other property I own.

Can I please ask the lands department to give me the chance to pick the land I wish to have as compensation?

In total Gaffarena was paid €516,390
in cash, land measuring 1,663 square metres at White Rocks valued at €70,000, as well as adjacent land measuring 3,735 square metres, valued at €260,000;
land measuring 24,073 square metres and another measuring 2,150 square metres in Zebbug, together valued at €375,000; a €65,000 property on Manwel Dimech Street, Sliema; land at Ta’ Kandja measuring 5,992 square metres valued at €165,800 and 9,980 square metres of land at Handaq valued at €192,810.

Gaffarena is, by the way, a shareholder in J Gaff Service Station Ltd, whose petrol pump in a choice traffic area, was in 2014 finally granted a controversial permit by MEPA after having been forcefully shut down in 2008 and again in 2009 after its owners illegally built new structures on site.

While Michael Falzon was wondering whether he was responsible for what happened in the lands department, another former politician was battling with trying to understand what ‘on my watch’ really meant.

Former health minister Louis Galea, remembered for the Auxiliary Workers’ Scheme scandal in the nineties and the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools ten years later, has denied having been aware of the alleged fraudulent concrete being supplied on site at the Mater Dei Hospital back in 1996, when he was responsible for the Foundation for Medical Sciences and Services.

He also said that he did not agree with political responsibility being shouldered for fraud that was “completely unknown to the political authorities”. He sounded like so many other politicians and elected officials. Who look after their skin.

Retired judge Philip Sciberras has revealed that Galea had received a letter pointing out a number of deficiencies, but no action was taken.

Galea, who was health minister up to October 1996 during the first phase of construction of the hospital, stated that neither the FMSS, nor the government were aware of the alleged fraud.

The former minister who is now, for all his sins, a member of the prestigious European Court of Auditors, said
he would collaborate fully with the authorities but that he had reservations on the inquiry itself. He was kicked upstairs and far away by the Gonzi administration.

Galea argued in a statement that
there was a lack of evidence backing up certain statements made by a number
of witnesses, as well as lack of evidence backing up certain conclusions expressed by the board of inquiry.

Galea, who made a great big deal of having known personally the convicted Italian mentor of Mater Dei, the late Don Luigi Maria Verzè, continues to believe that he has no responsibility for what happened.

Truth be told is that the only people paying dearly for the Gaffarena and Mater Dei scandals are those who had nothing to do with the scandals – the ones who pay their taxes and do not live and scavenge over publicly funded projects.