The co-owners of the Old Mint Street property at the centre of the Gaffarena scandal have asked to participate in the case filed by the Attorney General and Joseph Muscat (as MP) to reverse the multi-million euro deal with Mark Gaffarena, court documents show.
The applications were filed in court yesterday.
A number of the co-owners argue in the application that the government is claiming to have expropriated a half undivided share of 36, Old Mint Street, Valletta from all the co-owners and not only from Mr Gaffarena.
But they were left out of the deal despite the fact that the government now owns part of their share. The scandal, exposed by the Times of Malta last May, revealed the deal cost taxpayers over €3 million.
The deal was subject to an investigation by the National Audit Office that found there had been “collusion” between the Land Department, Mr Gaffarena and former Planning Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon who has had to resign.
The Auditor also found government officials had been “secretly cooperating to the detriment of the other property co-owners”.
It is now being argued that since an undivided share is co-owned, it did not belong solely to Mr Gaffarena. So the two contracts the government signed with Mr Gaffarena resulted in payments to him for the share that also belonged to other parties.
Yet, the rest got nothing even though the government now owns part of their share. The co-owners are therefore asking the court to allow them to participate in this case too because the outcome of the case filed by the government to cancel the deal could impact them.
The submission by the co-owners also refers to a judicial protest filed by them against the government in June last year, soon after this newspaper revealed the scandal. They never received an acknowledgment or reply. At the time, the government was still denying any wrongdoing.
Following the conclusions of the NAO investigation, the government committed to an effort to cancel the deal. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat filed a court case in his capacity as MP in which he is suing the government.
Although the court has decided to uphold the Prime Minister’s request for a warrant to stop Mr Gaffarena transferring properties given to him by the government, Mr Gafferena’s lawyers have argued the case is “an exercise being done for political purposes”.
Mr Gaffarena’s lawyer, Keith Bonnici, had argued that: “The submission (rikors) by Joseph Muscat unequivocally states that he is acting in his capacity as an MP and, therefore, independently of the government. In this context, Dr Muscat cannot assume the role of Prime Minister when presenting a case as an MP”.
The process is discriminatory and constitutes a breach of Mr Gaffarena’s human rights because it was being done for political ends, his lawyer has argued.
Last June, a few weeks after the story had broken, Mr Gaffarena had also attempted to take out a court injunction against some of the owners, since he had signed a promise of sale agreement to buy yet another share of the property from them. His request was turned down by the courts.