Fenech Adami fights back with defamation suit over villa extension report

Beppe Fenech Adami has sued Labour media One News for defamation, claiming a TV news report on his property in Gharghur was “a lie”.

The PN deputy leader has disputed suggestions that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi accorded him any special treatment by allowing his Gharghur home to extend beyond the two-storey limit, just days after telling the Malta Environment and Planning Authority to limit heights on properties on the perimeter of the development zone.

Fenech Adami is claiming that Gonzi’s letter to MEPA chairman Austin Walker, sent three days after turning down the height extension on 10 October 2008, shows other applicants benefited from the same treatment. The two letters were produced by One News as evidence of the policy decision by Gonzi, and the ministerial instruction to approve three PC applications made three days later.

MORE Fenech Adami’s villa got Gonzi’s rubber-stamp for height extension

Labour media One News broadcast the contents of a letter from Gonzi in October 2008, in which he instructed MEPA chairman Austin Walker not to allow the addition of storeys on homes located on the periphery of the development zone, that had been controversially extended in 2006.

Fenech Adami’s home, located in a ‘green area’ in Gharghur which he had bought way back in 1988, was one of many properties to be included in the rationalisation of the development zones in 2006.

In his letter, Gonzi had told Walker that the height extension would affect those properties recently added to the development zone’s periphery. “In these sites that border onto rural areas, government would like to see a planning policy that prohibits an extension of building heights any more than is allowed,” Gonzi told Walker on 10 October 2008.

But on 13 October 2008 Gonzi informed the MEPA board secretary that he would approve three individual Planning  Control applications, one of which affected the development of Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami’s villa.

The other two PC applications were for properties in Zurrieq on Triq Wied Babu, and in Manikata on Triq ir-Raded.

One News editor Aleander Balzan said Fenech Adami's legal action was intended at stopping the PL media arm from broadcasting new reports on his property development. “I'm looking forward for my day in court to present the evidence that shows Fenech Adami benefited from a scandalous decision. No libel suit will intimidate journalists from publishing the truth."

Fenech Adami accuses One News of lying

In accusing One News of lying, Fenech Adami said he bought his property in 1988 as a finished property that was lived in by its previous owners.

Fenech Adami denied that he had been given any form of preferential treatment for developing his house beyond its immediate limits, saying that the zoning of the neighbourhood accorded the same rights to every other property owner.

The PN deputy leader also quibbled over One News’s claim that he was allowed a ‘three-storey’ height extension, when he effectively built an additional storey and turret over the orginal two-storey home. “Everybody else in the zone had the right to do the same,” Fenech Adami said.

Fenech Adami said the news report had recycled a Super One report of 21 May 2006 that he had already denied, and claimed the new report was an act of intimidation. “Government is in a state of panic and drowning in corruption,” Fenech Adami said in his statement.