A new internal auditor at the Lands Authority reviewed six property deals in the last quarter of 2017 “in a bid to increase transparency”, Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg said on Friday.
The auditor, Charlene Muscat, was appointed in August but only took up her office in October giving her a few weeks to review the deals.
Addressing a news conference, Dr Borg said the move to appoint an auditor who would scrutinise property transactions at the authority of over €100,000, showed its commitment to tackle transparency and good governance issues there head on.
“A situation of a lack of accountability and good governance in public lands has persisted for decades. We could have just ignored this problem but we chose to address it,” Dr Borg said.
The Lands Authority was set up in early 2017 following the political storm of the Gaffarena scandal – a shady deal involving the transfer of a property in Valletta which led to the resignation of then parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon. At the time the responsible body was known as the Lands Department.
Dr Borg said the reform showed the government certainly did not want such scandals to repeat themselves. Asked if he thought the internal auditor would have caught the Gaffarena deal before it went through, Dr Borg said “God forbid we should have any deals that are questionable under this new system”.
The Gaffarena deal has since been ordered to be reversed by the courts.
The introduction of an internal auditor is not the only change to the system in public lands.
Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco, the authority’s chairman, told reporters how the authority’s board was bi-partisan and made up of some 10 people who met nearly every week.
“You could have had, in the past, a system were a deal would go through as it was signed off by just one or two people. But with 10 people scrutinising it, and an auditor, the new set-up is much more serious,” Judge Farrugia Sacco said.
Dr Borg explained that the public, the board, and the chief executive could all ask for a particular property deal to be audited. Alternatively the auditor could decide to review a particular transfer on his own initiative.
An annual report of the audits conducted will be tabled in Parliament on Monday.
Asked if the auditor would be limited to existing cases or if a complainant could ask for an old agreement to be reviewed, no straight answer was given, however, Judge Lino Sacco was sceptical saying: “we would get stuck if we had to start reviewing past cases as well”.
Judge Farrugia Sacco was twice recommended for impeachment by the judiciary watchdog – the Commission for the Administration of Justice – on accusations of breaching the judiciary’s code of ethics. He escaped unscathed, however, having retired from the bench.