Looking back at 2015: Supping with Gaffarena

In the world of politics, a man like Joe Gaffarena was a reliable political supporter. With land and liquidity aplenty, the Gaffarena family’s business interests had to be served so that they could keep some political wheels in motion. But it was not until 2015 that the modus operandi of Maltese politicians and that of Joe Gaffarena became truly known.

It started with news that Gaffarena scion Marco had benefited from a controversially “fast-track expropriation” of a Valletta palazzino he owned: the government offices of the Building Industry Consultative Council, by happenstance led by a family friend of sorts, architect Charles Buhagiar, the Labour MP.

Gaffarena made headlines when The Times revealed that he had been granted €1.65 million in a land and cash compensation, for just a 50% stake in the Old Mint Street building that houses the BICC.

Joseph Sammut, a PL deputy, hugs Marco Gaffarena. He has sued MaltaToday for libel because Marco Gaffarena was referred to as a former business associate

Mark Gaffarena (left) and PN deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami

The expropriation was controversial because Gaffarena originally took ownership of 25% of the building in 2007 for just €23,294 – and was compensated €822,500 in cash and lands in January 2015.

But in February 2015 he had also managed to purchase another 25% portion of the building for €139,762, and was paid another €822,500 in lands and cash in April 2015. 

He also personally selected the lands to be given as compensation, all of which were situated close to land he already owned or leased, or which he intended to develop, adding even more value to the property he received in compensation.

The Office of the Prime Minister moved to clear the heavy air with  two inquiries, one from the government’s own internal audit and investigations department (IAID) and the other by the Auditor General. The IAID report, MaltaToday later reported, revealed that the land granted to Gaffarena as payment for the Valletta property expropriated from him, was in excess of a legal 30% ceiling which such land valuations cannot exceed: the investigation was handed over to the NAO, but it also discovered a trend of excessive valuations of land which may have been ongoing since 2008. 

In the Gaffarena case, the land transferred was in excess of a 30% ceiling set in the Disposal of Government Land Act: that in land exchanges, the value of the government land to be given cannot exceed 30% of the value of the expropriated land.

From then on, the role of Gaffarena senior as a well-known sponsor of a number of Labour candidates, especially in the sixth and seventh electoral districts – as well as Nationalist candidates – became framed in the political story of his notorious petrol pump station in Qormi, which became associated with a number of illegalities that were finally only sanctioned under the Labour administration after re-election.

Joseph Gaffarena was found to be in business with various members of the political establishment on both sides of the divide: he carried out a €256,000 property transaction with former PN secretary-general Joe Saliba, and went into the healthcare business with former Labour MP Louis Buhagiar.

More Gaffarena associations came by the way of simple favours: the father of Nationalist whip David Agius, a bird trapper, was granted use of Gaffarena’s land for a trapping site in fields at Tas-Salib, limits of Rabat.

People like PN deputy leader for party affairs, Beppe Fenech Adami, turned out to have been a former lawyer for the Gaffarena family, despite his vocal criticism of the controversial Old Mint Street expropriations.

Gaffarena’s son Marco also enjoyed a former business relationship with Labour MP Joseph M. Sammut in International Tobacco Malta, now defunct; Sammut had represented Gaffarena in a case before the Rural Leases Control Board, and another case in the civil court. Likewise, former PL president and current chairman of the Grand Harbour Regeneration Corporation Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi also represented Gaffarena in the same Rural Leases Control Board case.

And finally came MaltaToday’s story that cost former Nationalist minister Joe Cassar’s parliament seat: Gaffarena had paid for him an €8,150 bill for construction works at his Dingli farmhouse, proven by receipts published by this newspaper that sent the Damoclean sword falling. Days earlier he had claimed in parliament that his family was being threatened by “blackmail” and that he was the victim of a frame-up, suggesting that he had not approved Gaffarena’s donations.

But the disclosure that so many MPs and politicians had relationships with Gaffarena, reconfirmed not just the public’s fears of the involvement of the political class with businessmen, but also the deep-rooted clientelism that crossed the political divide. 

Joe Gaffarena hailed from Qormi and worked closely with various Nationalist politicians, notably George Hyzler and John Dalli.

Gaffarena’s controversial petrol station in Qormi was granted a permit in 2006, two years before a general election. But in September 2008 it faced an enforcement order for illegal works on 80% of the construction. The enforcement order was issued three months after Joe Saliba stepped down from the post of secretary-general.  MEPA sealed off access to the entrance, given that Gaffarena had gone beyond the 2006 permit. But the J. Gaff Service Station still opened for business in summer 2009 and was again closed down by MEPA in September that year. 

An application filed to sanction the existing works was refused by MEPA. But under Labour in 2014 the Gaffarena family was granted a temporary clearance to reopen its petrol station in Qormi against a €500,000 bank guarantee. Gaffarena had said that his eight children had suffered “hardship” for five years due the station’s closure.

In reality, Gaffarena’s family had found other ways to thrive, thanks to their political alliances.