Goalposts moved for BICAL owners in Chief Justice’s snap decision

The decision was taken in June 2010 before Vincent de Gaetano took up his new post in the European Court of Human Rights.

Pace’s defence team – Tonio Azzopardi and Malcolm Pace – said that such a principle would set a “very dangerous legal precedent” that would allow any case by a citizen to be manoeuvred by the powers that be.

“At any time during the hearing of a court case it would become possible to purposely change the presiding judge to influence the proper administration of justice. This would set up a system of ‘musical chairs’ for members of the judiciary after they have already been assigned with and heard a case for several years,” Pace told MaltaToday.

In a constitutional case to be filed tomorrow, Pace will argue that the measure goes against the proper administration of justice and constitutes a serious threat to the right to a fair hearing in a reasonable time.

“There is nothing wrong with the Chief Justice having the power to assign court cases from an administrative point of view. But it has never been nor should it be the case that during the hearing of a court case by a Judge – whoever he may be – is suddenly substituted without some very serious reason justified by law.”

Civil cases normally continue to be heard by the same judge unless a legally valid circumstance arises: a judge’s retirement, abstention or challenge of a judge by the parties.

Some of his recent cases now were also pending final judgement, after certain judges fixed a considerable number of sittings to conclude the collection of evidence by the end of the year.

Cecil Pace, 80, has already won an important Constitutional case against a 1995 law that transferred all civil cases against the BICAL controller to an administrative tribunal. In 2003, the Constitutional court found that the tribunal had been “anti-constitutional”.

The cases, many dating back to 1989, were filed by Cecil and Henry Pace against the controller, claiming gross negligence in the way the BICAL bank’s assets were administered after the bank’s licence was suspended back in 1973.

Several controllers appointed since then were expected to sell off as many assets as necessary from the bank and Pace’s group of companies so as to settle all pending debts with the group’s creditors, and refund the bank depositors’ savings, and return the bank to the Paces.

But the process, much to the depositors’ chagrin, is still ongoing. That’s because most of the assets were sold off at a pittance to government sympathisers, while depositors are still waiting for the settlement in full of their monies.

Since then, the BICAL group was effectively dismembered by controllers who sold off companies at prices well below their net asset values. Pace owned several hotels, amongst them the Castille, Capua Court, Patricia, and Olympic hotels. All were sold at a pittance. In one instance, the Comino Hotel, valued at Lm1.5 million, was returned gratis by controller Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (later prime minister) to the landlord John Gaul who owned the emphyteusis on the land, so as not to pay the annual Lm12,000 lease.