St Elmo ‘laguna hotel’ UNESCO stopped: €170,000 kickback alleged

The rotten core of the Muscat administration had made impressive inroads into more than just the Labour government’s hospitals PPP.

When in 2018, MaltaToday reported that the UNESCO’s World Heritage experts had put a stop to a plan to gut the historic St Elmo fort in Valletta to create an artificial laguna for a hotel, little was known then that Shaukat Ali – the Pakistani businessman at the heart of the Vitals hospitals deal – was also making moves in this project.

Investigators in the Vitals magisterial inquiry now say that Shaukat Ali was part of a memorandum of understanding drafted by former chief of staff Keith Schembri and former minister Konrad Mizzi – all three now facing criminal charges related to the Vitals PPP – to take over St Elmo for a hotel project.

Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's Chief of Staff Keith Schembri (Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday)

The front company was Sohum Wellness, with a sole, uncontested bid for the restoration of lower St Elmo, a tender issued by the Grand Harbour Regeneration Corporation on 3 November 2015. The company itself was established just weeks later, on 17 November, 2015.

The company was owned by Indian millionaire Sanjeev Mansotra’s Planetcore group, whose relationship with the Maltese government was the Core Malta Education, another PPP that was expected to provide “innovative solutions” in school and higher education.

Investigators say Planetcore paid $200,000 into the client account of lawyer David Meli – described as a money middleman – who then passed on €170,000 to Bluestone – one of the offshore companies that held ownership in the Vitals PPP.

Planetcore and Schembri’s auditors Nexia BT then signed a letter of engagement over the GHRC contract to redevelop lower Fort St Elmo, for a transaction that investigators say was meant as a guise to hide what the money was being used for.

Shaukat Ali

MaltaToday had originally uncovered the relationship between Mansotra and Shaukat Ali: Planetcore was owned by Strategic Management Investment Inc, the same BVI company that owned Sohum Wellness, while Shaukat Ali’s consultancy company Eurasia held a shareholding in Planetcore.

Sohum Wellness became the sole, successful bidder to take over lower St Elmo – popularly known as the location for the filming of the 1978 prison drama Midnight Express – to turn into a luxury spa hotel.

However an experts mission from UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre took the initial project back to the drawing board. The experts, whose recommendations are legally binding, said turning the St Elmo parade ground into a laguna with a direct access through to the sea could not be allowed. A final report was submitted by UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre requesting a heritage impact assessment on the hotel proposal.