The Maltese government paid €1.65 million for half ownership of a property in Valletta that an investor had bought for a fraction of the price just weeks earlier.
The property in Old Mint Street, which houses a school and government offices used by the Building Industry Consultative Council, is part-owned by Mark
Gaffarena – who made a profit of €685,000 in less than two months as well as acquiring parcels of land in exchange measuring more than 10 football pitches in total.
Mr Gaffarena, whose family have been at the centre of a controversy over an illegal Qormi petrol station, bought part of the property knowing the government intended to expropriate it. Mr Gaffarena bought the area on February 26 for €139,762. The government expropriated it on April 10 for €822,500 in land and cash.
This was the second time in the space of a few months that the government
bought an area in the same property from Mr Gaffarena. On January 28, it expropriated another quarter of the property from Mr Gaffarena, paying another
€822,500 in land and cash. The other half of the property is still owned by third parties. A government spokesman said a decision was taken to expropriate part of the property because the owners were threatening to take back the property for their own use.
In a normal world, I would expect following actions from the government:
- firing parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon who has no clue what is going on
- firing all government officials from the Land Department involved in the Gaffarena case
- reversing all Gaffarena related deals including the recollection of the paid amounts
- starting a police investigation against Marco Gaffarena
But we don’t live in a normal world…
