Fixing things for our friends: Silvio Debono of the Seabank

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that “investors are furious” because the government’s call for proposals for the Institute of Tourism Studies site only spoke of “hotel and leisure activities” and made no mention at all of blocks of flats.

Yet the proposal put forward by Silvio ‘Seabank’ Debono’s outfit was for a vast agglomeration of flats with an afterthought of a hotel that is clearly there mainly to get the flats through. And though that proposal bears no resemblance to what the government asked for in public (private discussions are probably a different matter), it was evaluated and blessed.

And now Debono’s outfit is already selling those flats – before they have title to the land, before they have formal approval, before the ink is dry on whatever it was that the evaluation board signed off, and before they have even applied for planning permission, let alone gone through the process, including public discussion, and received approval.

This country becomes more shocking by the week.