Tall & Urban News

An anti-corruption watchdog is examining submissions in connection with a March 2014 meeting between then junior minister for planning Michael Farrugia and business magnate Yorgen Fenech.

The original complaint to the Permanent Commission Against Corruption by environmentalist Arnold Cassola in December 2019 had asked for a probe into whether Fenech’s close relationship with top officials and the donation of gifts to ex-prime minister Joseph Muscat had influenced policy decisions.

It has since emerged that Farrugia gave a sudden order to include Mrieħel in a government policy on high-rise buildings on 5 March 2014, the same day he met the former Tumas Group executive director at Auberge de Castille.

Cassola confirmed the commission is examining submissions about the timing of the Mrieħel order and the Farrugia-Fenech meeting. Several months after the meeting, the Tumas and Gasan groups filed an application to build the Quad Business Towers in Mrieħel.

Farrugia had claimed the decision to include Mrieħel in the high-rise policy was taken days before his order was sent by a “committee evaluating policies after public consultation.”

Asked by Times of Malta to provide documentation showing this committee decision, Farrugia said he no longer has access to such documentation.

The designer of the Mrieħel tower, Ray Demicoli, confirmed that he was already working on the Tumas-Gasan project while forming part of the Planning Authority policy group that steered through the 2014 high-rise reform.

Demicoli said his work on the Mrieħel project started “many years” before he was appointed to the policy group.

The architect, who also designed the Tumas Group’s Portomaso tower, said he was “surprised” at the time that the policy document put to public consultation did not include Mrieħel, since Malta did not have a financial center per se and Mrieħel was being considered as the best place for one.

Demicoli said he had not gained financially from its inclusion in the policy.

“Whether a tower was built or not was irrelevant since our fees were secured since we already had the job. Whether low-rise or a tower, the gross built-up area would be the same,” he said.

The architect added his firm had actually lost out on structural design fees for the project, as a low-rise building would have been handled in-house, but a specialized firm had to be engaged for the tower design.

Demicoli said he resigned from the policy group due to work pressures, although Planning Authority (PA) board minutes show he was present for parts of the discussions about the final policy on 20 March 2014, but not there for the discussion about Mrieħel and the final vote on the policy.

Among the PA board members who voted in favor of the policy and Mrieħel’s inclusion in it was Paul Apap Bologna, a business partner of the Tumas and Gasan groups in the Electrogas power station project.

Cassola said these were blatant examples of the conflicts of interest which had become so common in Malta. He said Mrieħel’s inclusion in the policy had helped turn the Gasan-Tumas land in Mrieħel into a gold mine overnight.

“If our government promotes social justice and equality, it should halt works at the Quad towers project,” Cassola said.

Matthew Pace, who had handled former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri’s investments through a secret offshore company in the BVI, also voted in favor of the final policy. The meeting minutes show board members had questioned the government’s sudden order to include Mrieħel in the policy.

Victor Axiak, who now heads the Environment and Resources Authority, suggested during the meeting that the reason for including Mrieħel should be included in the policy wording.

Axiak went on to say he had “great misgivings” about the policy as drafted and he was not happy with “certain decisions,” however would be voting in favor as an act of faith in future deciding bodies, as the policy in force at the time had too many loopholes as is.

Another board member, Franco Montesin, had queried whether comments from the government could be accepted after the consultation period about the policy closed.

NGOs in 2016 had unsuccessfully appealed the Quad towers permit on the basis that Mrieħel was only included as an appropriate location for high-rise buildings after the public consultation process had been closed.

At the time, the NGOs had demanded Muscat to explain the decision to include Mrieħel in the high-rise policy, as well as state why the decision had been taken behind closed doors and not put to public consultation.

For more on this story, go to The Times of Malta.