Opposition silent on business links between Gaffarena and Labour MP

A week after MaltaToday revealed a business partnership between Labour MP and government member on the MEPA board Joe Sammut and businessman Marco Gaffarena, Nationalist MP Ryan Callus – Sammut’s counterpart on the MEPA board – has insisted that the PN’s silence was not down to any association between the party and the Gaffarenas.

It’s a silence that says much about politics and the strategic political loyalties of the Gaffarena family. Last week MaltaToday featured a photo of Marco Gaffarena at a political benefit for Sammut: only recently, a MEPA directorate granted the Gaffarenas a three-year permit to open their petrol pump in Qormi after it was forcefully shut down for its illegal extensions back in 2009 by MEPA.

The decision was not taken by the MEPA board on which Sammut and Callus sit.

But fresh from accusing government of “relegating” the environment by demerging MEPA’s environment arm from its planning arm, and accusing government of lacking transparency, shadow minister for the environment Ryan Callus has refused to comment on the relationship between Gaffarena and Sammut, or the controversial permit for the J Gaff Service Station.

Callus on Friday adopted a guarded approach, insisting that he was not aware of the J Gaff Service Station permit and that he would not be “issuing further comments because the permit wasn’t approved by the MEPA board.”

Asked to explain the PN and its media’s silence on either the permit or the Labour MP’s business relationship with a Gaffarena shareholder, Callus said: “God forbid if we would have to issue a statement on every issue concerning the government.”

Callus, elected from the sixth electoral district, which includes Qormi, claimed he was “not aware of” any association between the Gaffarenas and the Nationalist Party.

“I am not aware whether the Gaffarenas are in some way or another, financing the party. Neither am I aware of any links between Marco Gaffarena and party candidates,” he said.

Callus, also the Opposition’s representative on the MEPA board, also ruled out any links between himself and the Gaffarenas.

“The people who are in government and its appointees should be the ones who should shed light on the matter. Marco Gaffarena and Joseph Sammut must answer these questions themselves.”

Hinting at a possible conflict of interest by Joseph Sammut, Callus said that “everyone has to be responsible and accountable for his own actions… If there is truly a conflict of interest, Joseph Sammut must stand out and say he has conflict of interest. However, I am not in a position to judge the relationship between Joseph Sammut and Marco Gaffarena,” Callus told MaltaToday.

Last week, MaltaToday revealed that Marco Gaffarena, one of the owners of the controversial Gaffarena service station in Qormi, and Sammut are directors of an import company, International Tobacco (Malta) Limited.

Gaffarena is a shareholder in J Gaff Service Station Ltd, whose petrol pump last month was finally granted a controversial permit by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, after having been forcefully shut down in 2008 and again in 2009 after its owners illegally built new structures on site.

The decision to grant this temporary permit was however not taken by the MEPA Board, on which Sammut sits, but by a subsidiary board.

But the Labour MP was unexpectedly cagey when MaltaToday tried to solicit a comment on his business relationship with Gaffarena, last week.

Sammut sternly refused to explain the company’s functions, and his association with Gafferena, one of his political supporters in the last general elections, as evidence by a photo showing the businessman at a 2013 campaign event together with Labour activist Sandro Chetcuti, the president of the Malta Developers’ Association.

Earlier this year, the well-connected Gaffarena family, was granted a temporary clearance to reopen its petrol station in Qormi against a €500,000 bank guarantee.

Joe Gaffarena, the director of the family business and father to Marco Gaffarena, said that his eight children had suffered “hardship” for five years due the station’s closure.

Gaffarena was awarded a permit to erect the petrol station in 2007, but subsequent additions were made without permit. In January 2011, MEPA turned down the sanctioning of extension works to Gaffarena’s petrol station because the illegalities on site were resulting in the further intensification of urbanization in an outside development zone.