Ombudsman to investigate Planning Authority’s chartering of private jet

The Ombudsman has opened an investigation in connection with the chartering of a private jet for a Planning Authority board member to be present for the vote on the permit for the DB group’s City Centre project. 

Former Alternattiva Demokratika chairperson Arnold Cassola said he had requested the Ombudsman to investigate reports that the Planning Authority engaged and paid for a private jet to transport board member Jacqueline Gili from Sicily to Malta and back, for the PA sitting relating to the City Centre high-rise. 

Cassola said he wanted to know whether this was “maladministration, good use of taxpayer’s money, discriminatory in relation to other applicants and objectors in other cases - as the PA did not engage private jets to ferry in absent board members - and if the PA has ever commissioned private jet travel for its Board Members and officials, as well as the instances in which this was done and the cost to the public exchequer.” 

The Ombudsman replied that an investigation had been opened on this grievance. 

Arnold Cassola

READ MORE: PA member jetted in to vote in favour of DB high-rise was absent on 29 decisions in 2017 

The Planning Authority spent €8,750 on a private jet to bring PA Board member Jacqueline Gili to Malta to vote in last Thursday’s vote which approved a permit for the db Group’s City Centre project in Pembroke. 

The decision by the PA board to approve the DB group’s 38-storey high-rise hotel with 10 votes to four, angered residents of Pembroke, whose Labour-led council opposed the project. 

Gili was flown in on a private jet from a holiday in Sicily before the vote on the controversial project, despite the fact that it was not necessary that all members be present. The board’s chairman Vince Cassar later described the move, taken by CEO Johann Buttigieg, as an unprecedented one. 

The PA defended itself saying that back in August 2016, when a similar high-rise planning application was approved, “much criticism had been levelled at a board member who for medical reasons was not able to be present”. 

“The Authority felt that the City Centre project was a high-profile case and carried the same magnitude and importance as that of other high-rise projects,” the PA said. 

“For this reason, the authority wanted to make sure that all the Planning Board members were present for the public meeting. 

The PA said that when the date for the meeting was communicated to the board members, 15 days before it was scheduled to take place, Gili had informed the authority that she was going to be away on a family vacation. 

“For the sake of transparency, we should clarify that City Centre, as developers, paid an application fee of over €1.2 million. The public meeting outside the premises of the Planning Authority did not exceed €25,000,” the PA said.