Strickland heirs charge newspaper foundation with ‘constant harassment’

Mabel Strickland’s legacy looms large at Allied Newspapers, which houses the newspapers she and her father founded 80 years ago and where little of what happened in 20th century Malta has not run off its rollers.

But there is also a gargantuan power-struggle taking place behind the scenes. And it concerns Strickland’s legacy, its executors, the men who control The Times, and the pretenders to her inheritance, heirs Robert Hornyold Strickland and his wife Dierdre.

Inside the courtroom presided by Mr Justice Silvio Meli earlier this week, only this newspaper witnessed the acrimonious battle between the Stricklands and the Strickland Foundation, created by Mabel Strickland in 1979 to which she bequeathed her Lija stately home and shares in Allied Newspapers.

As her great nephew, Mabel Strickland made Robert her sole and universal heir in 1975, in a will stating that all her property should go to him but held in a trust until he obtained Maltese nationality. The reason for the trust was to circumvent the Foreign Interference Act, that prevented him from inheriting his spinster aunt. Lawyers Guido de Marco and Prof. Joseph Ganado were named as the executors of her estate and were also placed on the Foundation board.

“It was clearly not my aunt’s wish to leave control of her family company to two extraneous families when she had so clearly made public her choice of heir – not only a close family member but a person who shared the values she sought to uphold,” he said, accusing the offices of de Marco & Associates are still holding on to drafts of her will that “should answer many of the queries thrown up by the poor drafting of the will and the contradictions between it and the foundation document, and Mabel’s other letters.”

It’s this conundrum over Mabel Strickland’s will that has both sides in court, fighting over the stately Villa Parisio and the control of the Foundation shares.

For 22 years, the trust’s members – de Marco and Ganado amongst others – each controlled the foundation’s shares directly; in 2010 those shares were registered in the name of the foundation, controlling 78% of the newspaper business. Hornyold Strickland is today the second largest shareholder with 13.3%, and expects that he be involved in the Strickland Foundation and the Allied board.

For the last three decades – Hornyold Strickland told the court this week – his attempts at achieving a resolution and gaining access to Mabel’s correspondence with her executors de Marco and Ganado, and now their sons, have amounted to little. “It appears that the executors have in reality been competing with [me] to take control of the estate,” he said in an affidavit.

“The families of the original executors now seem to have control and possession of Mabel’s villa, her controlling shareholding in Allied and many of the family heritage items. This was never Mabel’s intentions when making me her heir.”

According to her will, the Strickland Foundation was left the stately home in Lija as its rightful seat. Hornyold Strickland, on the other hand, appears in the will as having been granted only “right of use and habitation of the guest rooms with bathroom and study”.

But the Hornyold Stricklands charge the foundation with having taken possession of Villa Parisio, and this week’s court sitting saw Dierdre Hornyold Strickland accuse the foundation with “harassment” as she took the stand to testify, unable to hold back the tears when describing how she confronts the foundation members.

The whole dispute on the living arrangement at the villa is about the executors’ interpretation of Strickland’s will, which they claim limits Hornyold Strickland and his family to a single bedroom and bathroom. “To suggest that Mabel seriously thought her heir, family and any visiting guests could only use one bathroom at the Villa is nothing short of insulting to the Strickland – hardly the behaviour of executors supposedly acting as the bonus pater familias towards the sole heir as required by law.”

Present in the court were foundation members Frank Bonello and former Times editor Victor Aquilina, whom Hornyold Strickland has filmed inside Villa Parisio on several occasions: moving furniture out, or hosting a lunch for Times staff. These altercations, Hornyold Strickland told the judge, had been going on since 2009 when the heirs took up permanence in Lija.

“It’s been extremely stressful when I know that my husband has been valiantly trying to find a reasonable settlement. We’ve been trying to live at this villa but we have been subjected to such harassment that I felt I have had to record this harassment,” she said.

“To give an example of the harassment we passed through, one instance I was making my husband a cup of coffee at 7:30am in my gown, when I found Victor Aquilina in the house. I asked why he did not have the courtesy to phone ahead, and he refused to leave the villa.

“When we first moved in they suggested we use a kitchenette instead of the main kitchen. Every time we left Malta, we would find all the utensils, pots and pans, sugar and flour that we had placed in the main kitchen, removed and placed in our bedroom. It happened so many times it’s been stressful.”

In her testimony, Hornyold Strickland became exceptionally emotional at recounting the time Aquilina hosted a lunch for Times journalists at the villa, during which she said they were told to ‘clear out of the villa’.

“When they had a lunch for Times journalists in our home this was an extraordinary imposition, because we were effectively told to clear our of our home so that Victor Aquilina hosts the lunch,” she told Judge Meli, as she handed over to the court a photo of the table of journalists at lunch.

Hornyold Strickland said that the family spent €2,000 to initiate spoliation proceedings against the foundation when the Mabel Strickland study was locked, preventing Robert from entering. The matter was solved amicably.

“Another time I found Bonello and Aquilina in the drawing room taking furniture out. They entered completely unannounced. We also had an argument because we were not sleeping in the guest bedroom.”

Hornyold Strickland says the foundation has been adamant that they make use of the guest bedroom and bathroom as indicated by Mabel in her will.

“I have had my family staying with us, with the ridiculous suggestion that we use the one bathroom and bedroom, when Mabel said – as the foundation’s statute says that the foundation can transfer its seat to anywhere in Malta.

“It’s been a long and arduous time when common sense would have dictated they could have transferred their seat elsewhere in the village and leave us in peace.”

The case is soon drawing to a close, with Judge Meli having yet again made a customary plea to both sides to resolve the matter before he is to pronounce judgement on the case. In past sittings, Judge Meli has expressed his disappointment at the two parties’ refusal to reach a settlement. “I don’t know what’s between you,” he had said back in 2013. “But it baffles me as to why both sides are refusing to reach an intelligent compromise.”