Yesterday, in his interview with The Sunday Times of Malta, the master of spin was at it again. The Prime Minister uttered the canard, twice, that the scandal clothing the Old Mint Street gilded expropriation was identical to past cases.
This was no red herring. This was the commencement of an intricate web of spin that will be spun to ruthlessly put the controversial Old Mint Street scandal in the same basket as some other cases which are not even remotely comparable.
When the Internal Audit Investigations Department (IAID) asked to interview me some weeks ago, I immediately accepted. Thereafter, I was told that former minister Tonio Fenech and the former Commissioner of Land were also interviewed.
When the interview was about to start, I repeatedly queried why no oath was being administered as I always testify under oath. Each time I was told that this was as per set procedure in all their work.
During the 30-minute interview, I was asked set questions relating to two land exchange transactions. One dates to July 2009 and the other from March 5, 2013. In the former case, the 30 per cent threshold was exceeded by a mere €12,000 (to the benefit of the government) in a €250,000 deed. In the latter, in a €5 million expropriation, some €20,000 were wrongly computed in the tax due.
In both of these land exchanges there was no involvement of any politician. The politician merely approved the recommendation by the Commissioner of Land as had always been the case. No meetings to allow the individual concerned to pick and choose which lands were to be given. No secretariat staff members accompanying the individuals to the department.
In both cases the public purpose underpinning the expropriation was manifest and undoubted. No piecemeal expropriation from a selected co-owner. And no third parties ending up as victims of a co-owner given preferential treatment by the Land Department. In both cases, the shortcomings were merely administrative.
The Old Mint Street scandal, which was concocted under the Prime Minister’s nose, is a completely different kettle of fish for at least 11 reasons. There was evidently no public purpose to justify the multi-million euro expropriation of half a building housing a grand 13 employees. The 30 per cent threshold was massively overshot.
The politician met, prior to the expropriation, the person who had a lot to gain from the expropriation. A secretariat staff member accompanied the interested party to the Land Department to make sure he was given red carpet treatment. Marco Gaffarena selected the public land to be exchanged.
There was evidently no public purpose to justify the multi-million euro expropriation of half a building housing a grand 13 employees
The department, very exceptionally, expropriated a fourth undivided share not once but twice in the space of a few weeks. The department expropriated an undivided share from the same co-owner, twice, instead of from all the co-owners who ended up deceived, deprived of profits and duped.
The two deeds after each of these expropriations of undivided shares were signed six and three days respectively after the Presidential declarations ordering the expropriation.
The Gaffarena deal exposed the other co-owners to the risk of potential action against them by the Commissioner of Inland Revenue through no fault of their own, truly adding insult to their injury.
In the Gaffarena expropriation, a building described by the politician as having “historical and architectural value” in the core of our capital city was expropriated as “a building site” and valued as such. The value of the public land given in exchange was underestimated.
Finally, the government lied when it said, last May, that “one of the owners – who owned half the building – offered to sell his share to the government”, when the truth is that on the date of the first expropriation of an undivided share owned by Gaffarena on January 22, 2015 he only owned one-fourth undivided share.
For these reasons and more, there cannot be any semblance of a hint of a comparison between the Old Mint Street scandal and other so-called “cases” which were manifest administrative shortcomings and definitely not the result of a deliberate and abusive design to enrich someone.
The Prime Minister is on record saying that he will not publish the IAID report he ordered in order not to prejudice (sic) the investigation under way by the Auditor General. He wants to pull a fast one again.
Once the Prime Minister decided to send the IAID report to the Auditor General (NAO), there is simply no reason anymore not to publish it since its publication, in the public interest of transparency, will evidently not influence the NAO. Like Keats, he wants to “spin, like the spider, from his own inward his own airy citadel”.
Facts are sacred, Prime Minister.
Jason Azzopardi is shadow minister for citizens’ rights, justice and democracy.