Jason Azzopardi defends €400,000 compensation for Mtahleb expropriation

Former Lands Minister Jason Azzopardi took to Facebook to defend a €400,000 expropriation deal for a countryside passage that was originally estimated at just €60,000.

MaltaToday on Sunday published a thread of emails showing that compensation paid for in 2011 – for land expropriated in 1974 – was almost seven times as much the original valuation.

‘The Office of the Prime Minister leaked part of a story + lied. Once I have nothing to hide or fear, I challenge OPM to immediately publish ALL the file in question, including the report by the 3 architects who valued over 8 tumoli of land as at 2012, and the interests due since 1974,” Azzopardi said on Facebook.

“Instead of Labour apologizing for the obscenities of the 70s + 80s, when it illegally deprived people of their lands, it dredges the bottom by spinning outright lies. I will neither cow nor bow to devious minds wanting to alienate us from the corruption in the Old Mint Street scandal.”

The thread of emails shed light on the political interference inside the Lands Department.

The land in question belonged to entrepreneur Emanuel Peresso, CEO of the Michele Peresso Group of Companies, who received €400,000 cash. The Mtahleb land was expropriated for road formation in 1974 – Dom Mintoff’s first legislature after his 1971 electoral win – and for which compensation was paid just four years ago, after much arm-twisting, the emails suggest.

An email dated 9 October 2011 from the then-director general of the Lands Department Albert Mamo to Azzopardi, showed that the land had been valued as an agricultural one at a value of approximately €60,000.

“It is pertinent to state here that he had purchased the land at a much lower price. Nevertheless, I requested a fresh valuation and the value was increased to approximately €140,000. To this, one has to add damages/interest from the date of taking over of the land, but in order to increase the value as much as possible we took the date of the publication of the government gazette as the date of taking-over, even though the road may have been formed much later,” Mamo told Azzopardi.

“He still insists that the price of the land is €400,000 and compiled a report by his architect basing his argument on the market price and what the land would actually cost if sold for development today as this was his original intention.”

Within a fortnight of Mamo’s email, Peresso wrote to the assistant director at the Government Property Department, Margaret Falzon, copied to Lawrence Gonzi, saying: “The Prime Minister has confirmed to us that the Lands Department has issued another valuation of our taken land at Mtahleb… This new valuation amounts to €140,000 plus damages and interest, from 1974 to date.”

The GPD assistant director was told that – following the valuation as stated by the OPM – “it is very important that we receive the full payment of €140,000 plus damages/interest at your very earliest”.

On receiving this email, that same day on 24 October, Falzon wrote to Mamo. “I do not know from where the €140,000 figure for the land excluding interests was obtained. According to our highest valuation, the price of the land was €59,130 while interests amounted to €58,946, in all €118,076.”

In the email sent to Azzopardi, Mamo revealed that Peresso had called for a €360,000 expropriation compensation, at one point admitting that “he ultimately requires cash as one of his business deals failed”.