Heritage Malta to decide which items to purchase from buyers

Heritage Malta can take up to two months to evaluate which items from former Prime Minister George Borg Olivier's auction it plans to buy for the national collection.

A team of experts will be evaluating the auctioned items in terms of their artistic, ethnic and historical value before Heritage Malta exercises its pre-emption rights over the belongings of the former premier who saw Malta through its independence from the British in 1964.

Heritage Malta chairman Joe Said explained that the law allowed the national heritage agency the right of preference to buy auctioned items, of national value, at hammer price within two months of their sale.

Heritage Malta was trying to carry out this evaluation exercise as quickly as possible, however, decisions had to be taken carefully.

He referred to a comment posted on timesofmalta.com by a man who claimed he recognised a painting he had sold 11 years ago on the list of items labelled as having belonged to the former Nationalist Prime Minister, who died in 1980.

The auctioned objects were divided into two lists: one contained items belonging to Dr Borg Olivier and his wife, and the other listed different objects.

When contacted, auctioneer Pierre Grech Pillow from Obelisk Auctions admitted the item mentioned may have been placed in the wrong list.

However, he insisted that during the auction itself the distinction was made very clear to bidders.

The auction was held at the late Dr Borg Olivier's 19th century house in Sliema on Sunday. In all, it included 307 items, 250 of which belonged to Dr Borg Olivier's family, who parted with possessions but kept all the family documents, personal items and photographs, as well as a silver collection.

Dr Borg Olivier's personal walnut desk was sold to Labour MP Anton Refalo for a winning bid of €25,000.