When the Knights came, there were all kinds of coins used in Malta. Then, for practical reasons and to make a point of their sovereignty, the Knights started minting their own coins and built their mint in what is still in fact called Old Mint Street, in Valletta. They used Italian, so we still call it Strada Zecca. The French Knights would have it by the French noun for mint, la Monnaie, which also means ‘money’.
Nowadays, a lot of people would need to look for Old Mint Street on the web to find where it is, but Labour is making it a point to return this historic street to its former golden glory. And it has put Strada Zecca very much in the news lately for what is nothing short of a new way of minting euros by the million.
The minting did not happen in Strada Zecca itself, of course; the mint is long gone. The new mint is now at the Auberge de Castille, the seat of our Prime Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary, who have become very well-versed in a novel way of using those old and despised property expropriations. Who knows? We may yet start to love expropriations.
You see, in Old Mint Street there’s this house the government can use till 2028. Nowadays, it is more like a building looking for tenants; it contains a few offices which can easily be housed elsewhere. With government selling off the St Luke’s and Gozo hospitals, Żonqor and the old Marsa power station, one would have thought it would just give a house back to its rightful owners. They merit it, don’t they, after a century of the government squatting on their property?
But not with this government who knows 58 cents when it sees them, let alone a few millions. In comes one of the Gaffarenas – they of illegal Qormi petrol station fame. The Gaffarenas are now enjoying the fruits – sorry, the permit – of Mepa’s Labour under Joseph Muscat.
A coffee at the auberge and a few trips to the Lands’ Department later, the government expropriates a quarter of the house. Not all of the house and not from its rightful owners, but just Gaffarena’s quarter. The ink barely dry on the expropriation declaration of the first quarter, Gaffarena then buys a second quarter of the house and – very powerful guy indeed with this government – convinces Castille to expropriate that second quarter too.
€3,000,000 and counting for Gaffarena, €10,000,000 for the Labour Party, €4,200,000 for Cafe Premier
This is truly government by Gaffarena. Governments used to decide what they needed to expropriate; nowadays we have it from Castille that it was Gaffarena who convinced the government to expropriate.
The public interest used to be a prerequisite for expropriations; nowadays the public interest is by definition Gaffarena’s interest. And Gaffarena gets two superfast payments of upwards of€3m for half a house: €516,000 euro in cash and the rest in prime properties chosen very obviously by himself, making them even more valuable than the very conservative estimates the Times of Malta sought from an architect in the field.
That €3m plus is only for two quarters because on the other two Gaffarena already has a promise of sale which he’s adamant to enforce despite the duplicity of government expropriating his quarters in succession but not those of the rightful owners.
Expropriation by the quarter;it’s a pity Gaffarena wasn’t paidin dollars.
Auberge de la Monnaie. It’s all there: both Mepa and the Land Department under the direct responsibility of the Prime Minister at Castille. Auberge de la Monnaie sounds grand, doesn’t it? One-stop shop doesn’t sound as grand, but it’s more modern and efficient; it certainly wasfor Gaffarena.
And one can’t argue our Prime Minister isn’t a paragon of efficiency at this kind of deal. He certainly was with Sadeen who he convinced ‘in a minute’.
It also must be why Joseph Muscat is the very first Prime Minister ever in Malta’s history to keep the Land Department within his portfolio.
He was very efficient indeed with the Labour Party itself which got hold again of the Australia Hall; all €10 million worth of it. At the Auberge de la Monnaie, the line between public property and private or party interests is truly imperceptible.
Efficency galore at the aptly named Cafe Premier as well. No need to meet any civil servant; too finicky with their rules those old-fashioned people.
You owe the government €800,000? You have millions in other debts? You say so? Why not meet the Premier all alone without civil servants pushing around their old-fashioned rules and – God forbid – ethics? We’re all very liberal nowadays with other people’s money.
Not if you earn up to €7,000 a year doing some self-employed part-time work, you don’t. In that case you have to register for VAT. Not if you’re a small shareholder; your tax on dividends is the full 35 per cent. But if you’re the Premier, you can always meet the Premier and the Auberge de la Monnaie will mint your €4.2m.
Look at them, tumbling down the coin presses: €3m and counting for Gaffarena, €10m for the Labour Party, €4.2m for Cafe Premier; all nice and shiny in mint condition at the Auberge de la Monnaie.