State dead-legs Abbazia with Nadur deregistration

The government has come up with a novel way to stymie the attempts by a business group that is claiming ownership of large swathes of land in Gozo, due to its control of a 17th century noblewoman’s property foundation.

With homeowners in Qala and Nadur fearing they will lose the title to their homes, the government has stepped in to dead-leg the Abbazia di Sant Antonio delli Navarra from registering the land in its name, or challenge existing homeowners’ titles.

The unprecedented move has come by way of a ‘deregistration’ that revokes all land registrations over a large area in Nadur, including the titles of the 17th century Abbazia from the last two years.

The deregistration of the so-called Land Registration Area (LRA) was enacted by legal notice on Friday 11 February, with the home affairs minister ‘freezing’ any form of registration, just two years since Nadur and other Gozitan villages had been finally registered as LRAs.

The move comes two years since Prime Minister Robert Abela was petitioned by concerned residents in Gozo whose property titles were challenged by a business group composed of the redoubtable lawyer Carmelo Galea, former magistrate Dennis Montebello, and the Stagno Navarra family, purported heirs of the noblewoman Cosmanna Navarra.

As shareholders in Carravan Ltd, they control a 17th century foundation that long time ago arbitrarily swept up swathes of lands in Qala and Nadur. Adding insult to injury for the residents in these villages, is the Maltese Catholic archdiocese’s offhand decision to relinquish the control it previously had on the foundation, to Carravan, after a 30-year legal battle.

Today, Carravan is challenging property titles of homeowners in Qala and Nadur, with residents fighting their pretensions in expensive court cases.

But the legal notice now freezes these registrations, bringing a stalemate to proceedings that for the time being, stop Carravan from putting out the land for development as it did in Qala.

The legal notice could yet be challenged in the Maltese courts, given that the LRA in Nadur registered in 2019 gave rise to property registrations that brought with them “legitimate expectations” of asset value.

LRAs are designated areas in Malta where an effective title to land must be registered by those who own it. Notaries register property sales falling inside LRAs within two weeks, whether they are a first-time or subsequent registration.

This also means that pretenders to a property’s title can challenge any registration by filing a caution against it.

After 10 years pass the first registration, that title is converted into a guaranteed title – as long as no caution was filed against that title during that period.

Gozo land grab

Cosmanna Navarra’s property foundation was created in 1675, claiming vast amounts of land in Gozo that were to be controlled by her first-born male descendants.

When the Navarra line ran out of first-born male descendants, the Abbazia was placed under the control of a priest delegated by the Archbishop.

In 1992, Richard Stagno Navarra petitioned the courts to have him recognised as the Abbazia’s ‘rector’ after the Archbishop of the time refused to hand over the foundation to him.

Stagno Navarra obtained a controversial decree from Magistrate Carol Peralta – all in the space of 24 hours and without the Church being notified – to be made rector. Stagno Navarra then used that decree to transfer the lands to Carravan, a company owned by Montebello and Galea.

The Church protested, and filed a case challenging the decision in 1992, which was finally resolved in 2013 in their favour.

But in 2017, Archbishop Charles Scicluna acquiesced to a request by Carravan, to nominate its representative, the lawyer Patrick Valentino as rector, for a €200,000 contribution to be used to fulfil the pious obligations laid down by Cosmanna Navarra in the Abbazia deed.

The Archbishop is of the opinion that Navarra’s foundation was founded for her heirs, and that the Church’s control was necessary up until a descendant is able to take control of the foundation.

Still, the process to relinquish control happened at breakneck speed.

First, the Abbazia was deregistered from the Joint Office’s list of church properties – an office composed of government and Holy See delegates to administer the transfer of Church lands to the State.

The Maltese Church asked for the deletion of the Abbazia from the so-called Annex 8. But the Joint Office does not verify such requests: “We rest on their (the Church’s) word... that’s what the Concordat says,” the office’s director Duncan Mifsud told the courts in one of the Gozo cases between Carravan and homeowners.

A second sore point are the claims of lineage by the Stagno Navarras, which have never been verified.

No independent verification of the family tree presented by Richard Stagno Navarra back in 1992 has ever been carried out, but the document itself was never attacked in any of the dozen court cases that have characterised the court saga.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna himself told the court in one of these cases, that he made no verifications as to the claim of lineage. But he said that since Carravan and the Stagno Navarras had guaranteed the legitimacy of their claim, he could see no problem with their demands.