The heirs of the late former prime minister Dom Mintoff have been awarded €24,200 in compensation after a small property they owned in Cospicua was expropriated in 2006.

The family began procedures in 2007 after being offered €10,482 for a shop and apartment above it in Eagle Street, which they argued was worth €37,269.

The Land Arbitration Board, chaired by Magistrate Giovanni Grixti, heard the expropriation order was published in the Government Gazette on November 22, 2006.

The shop was 24 square metres with a small kitchen and bathroom next to a short corridor with stairs to the first and second floors.

The board appointed two architects to draw up a report on the property’s value, while the family had their own evaluation, which they said was done on what other properties were worth.

The two architects said the property was actually worth €24,200 after taking into consideration that it was structurally sound when expropriated. The board ordered the Land Department to pay the family €24,200 with interest.

In August 2004, Mr Mintoff was awarded €840,000 by the First Hall of the Civil Court in compensation for the de facto expropriation of his home at Delimara, Marsaxlokk.

The Mintoffs had pleaded in an application to the court in 1994 that their fundamental human right to enjoyment of their property, known as L-Għarix, had been violated after the Delimara power station was built just a road’s width away.