Mark Gaffarena is threatening legal action if the owners of part of the Valletta property at the centre of a scandal do not sell their share to him for a fraction of what it is now worth, court documents show.

Mr Gaffarena is telling the court that the co-owners of the prop-erty with the address 36, Old Mint Street, Valletta, are obliged to meet the conditions of a promise of sale agreement signed in March of last year, before the scandal was revealed by this newspaper.

Mark Gaffarena

The Sunday Times of Malta had revealed a year ago that Mr Gaffarena acquired a half undivided share of the Valletta property at a pittance, only to sell it to the government at a price of over €1.7 million.

The expropriation deal was in-vestigated by the National Audit Office, which found there had been “collusion” between the Land Department, Mr Gaffarena and former planning parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon, who eventually resigned.

The Auditor General also concluded that government officials had been “secretly cooperating to the detriment of the other property co-owners”. Before news of the scandal broke, Mr Gaffarena had already managed to sign two more promise of sale agreements for additional shares in the property at an extremely reduced price.

Despite the conclusions of the NAO report, Mr Gaffarena has now instituted a lawsuit to try to force some of these owners to sell their shares to him at the reduced price.

Following the investigation, the Prime Minister, in his capacity as an MP, filed a lawsuit against the government to try to reverse its purchase. Yet this has not deterred Mr Gaffarena from taking legal action to secure ownership of the rest of the property under the same terms and conditions.

It is unclear what position the government will now take, particularly after this dealing was slammed by the Auditor General in the report prepared by his office.

Meanwhile, last week, another 23 co-owners of the property filed a court application to join the case filed by Dr Muscat as MP and the Attorney General to reverse the deal, court documents show.

Most of the co-owners have now come together to protect their rights

This means that most of the co-owners of the Valletta property that was partly expropriated by the government have now come together to protect their rights.

The court hearing the case has already authorised a similar number of other co-owners to be considered as parties to it.

In a court application, the owners argued that the government had expropriated a half undivided share of the Valletta property from all, not just Mr Gaffarena.

They insisted that an undivided share was co-owned and it did not belong solely to Mr Gaffarena. They complained that they were left out of the deal – that in all cost taxpayers over €3 million in cash and land – despite the fact that the government now owned part of their share.

All the proceeds from the sale went to Mr Gaffarena. The rest of the co-owners got nothing.