It had not been in the government’s interest to expropriate the Fekruna lido, former Lands Commissioner Peter Mamo said on Wednesday.

He was addressing the Public Accounts Committee which was continuing with its discussion on a National Audit Office report into the 2013 land deal by the previous Nationalist administration.

According to the report, on March 5, 2013, just days before a general election, the Land Department had signed a contract transferring two properties (one in Swieqi, the other in San Ġwann) worth €4.3 million jointly as payment for land expropriated at Fekruna Bay, Xemxija.

The Fekruna land was valued at €5 million and the difference in favour of Fekruna Ltd, €700,000, was offset against amounts due to the government by the company in lieu of capital gains tax and duty on documents.

The report found that taxpayers had lost more than €1 million through the deal.

Mr Mamo said that, in principle, expropriation involved a “forced” land transfer, where the seller was not a willing party to a sale.

However, both the government and the landowners had been willing parties, and had carried out negotiations to identify the sites for which Fekruna would be exchanged even before the commencement of the expropriation process.

The government had gone ahead with expropriation because this was the only way for the landowners to be given government land in exchange, also known as permuta.

As a result, the €5 million at which the land had been valued - which had yet to be allocated - had appeared on the government’s books as expenditure.

Mr Mamo explained that he had “not been directly involved” in the Fekruna case beyond the drawing up of plans, as he was still a technical officer in 2013, and his testimony was, therefore, based on what he had read in the case file.

He identified various administrative shortcomings in the process leading up to the expropriation which, he said, he would not have permitted.

These shortcomings included the start of negotiations with landowners before authorisation was obtained from the minister who was politically responsible for the project which expropriation would make possible.

In this case, ministerial authorisation should have come from then Environment Minister Mario de Marco, as the expropriation was justified on the basis of environmental reasons.

In cases falling under his responsibility, where requests were made in the absence of such authorisation, or where authorisation had been provided by a parliamentary secretary in lieu of a minister, he had refused to carry them out before ministerial authorisation was provided, he said.

Opposition MPs argued that the intention was to grant the public access to the foreshore, but Mr Mamo asserted that access had already been granted through a previous expropriation of that foreshore itself. What was expropriated in this case was the lido, so that it could be removed.

Mr Mamo also flagged the government’s willingness to resort to arbitration after the landowners rejected the government’s own valuation, and the consideration of valuations drawn up by architects acting for the landowners, as decisions with which he did not agree.

The expropriation should have been carried out on the basis of the government’s own valuations, with the landowners free to seek recourse should they have been in disagreement with the compensation given.

Architects evaluating parcels of land which the government was buying or selling should either be in the government’s employ or third-parties engaged on the government’s behalf, he said.

“If land is being sold on behalf of the government, the government must evaluate their worth,” he said, adding that “in no way” should third-parties have been involved in the evaluation of government land.

Asked to explain how he believed that such a process should be approached, Mr Mamo said that he would have expropriated immediately at a fixed value established by government architects, subsequently negotiating for which land was to be given in exchange on the basis of that fixed value.

Carrying out negotiations with the underlying possibility of expropriation could be construed as “arm-bending”, he added.

Government MP Robert Abela pointed out that the process had been concluded “just days” before the 2013 election. Asked by government MP Alex Muscat whether he recalled other high-value expropriations of this nature being carried out on the doorstep of an election, Mr Mamo replied that he did not.