This property in Old Mint Street, Valletta, is at the centre of the Gaffarena scandal, after the government paid cash and land worth €3.4 million in all for the acquisition of half of the building.

All transactions at the Land Department are frozen and the police have been detailed to secure the building, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said yesterday.

The move was intended to ensure that no documents were removed from the building at the Auberge de Baviere, Valletta, after the National Audit Office found evidence of wrongdoing in the Gaffarena expropriation scandal.

Dr Muscat said a supervisory board headed by Judge Lawrence Quintano would oversee the department’s day-to-day operations until it was eventually transformed into an independent authority.

The Prime Minister said that, as an MP, he would be asking the court to annul all financial transactions and land transfers from which businessman Mark Gaffarena benefited.

He was addressing a press conference at the Auberge de Castille in the presence of outgoing planning parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon.

Dr Falzon submitted his resignation despite disagreeing with some of the Auditor General’s report’s conclusions about him, insisting during the press conference that he had not interfered at all in the Gaffarena process.

He said parts of the National Audit Office’s report sounded like a speech written by the Opposition leader and added sarcastically that some people were now “pleased with their pound of flesh”. “I hope they are now enjoying the taste of blood.”

Dr Muscat said he accepted the resignation with immediate effect and said he had no reason not to believe Dr Falzon when he said he had not interfered in the process.

“I found in Michael a loyal man… he cares about his country and understood the meaning of political responsibility and resigned,” Dr Muscat said, adding that this was unprecedented in recent political history.

Dr Falzon’s resignation marked the difference between this ad-ministration and the previous one, the Prime Minister added.

I found in Michael a loyal man… he cares about his country

He said the NAO report cast a shadow on the operations of the Land Department that went back in time and it was the government’s intention to reform it.

Dr Muscat said that Deborah Schembri would replace Dr Falzon as parliamentary secretary.

She would be tasked to see through the reform.

The Prime Minister yesterday also published the report drawn up by the Internal Audit and Investigations Department, which had been passed on to the NAO.

When the Gaffarena scandal erupted last year, the Prime Minister asked the IAID to probe the allegations.

The report was concluded some months later, but it was passed on to the NAO, which had star-ted a separate investigation into the case.