Mintoff and his million-euro Delimara boat-house
When Dom Mintoff and his two daughters sued the state for compensation for loss of tranquillity at his home in what his idiotic daughter called Smellimara, the courts succumbed and awarded him a million euros of taxpayers’ money. And he got to keep his pleasure-house.
No one ever asked, during the entire process, if the structure is legal. No proof of legality was sought by the courts and none was volunteered or obtained. There were no building permits among the documents exhibited.
Mintoff himself admitted that he had built his other villa – for this was a man with a large home in town (Tarxien), a seaside villa and a country villa too – in Fawwara entirely without permits. Then look what the Labour Party and Astrid did to the poor old former PN president when he tried rebuilding a farmhouse he owned there – with a permit to do so.
The truth about the illegality of his Fawwara home emerged when he came to sell it. Retroactive building ‘permits’ were then hurriedly issued to enable him to sell it. Because you know, we have to bend over backwards to accommodate this noxious individual.
It is quite possible that Mintoff and his daughters got compensation for something that wasn’t even legal in the first place.
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When he was still PrimeMinister, there were claims that Mintoff held a property somewhere in the area of Bahrija. In fact, it had been alleged that the Mtarfa By-Pass was built to serve that property. Were those claims correct?
”The truth about the illegality of his Fawwara home emerged when he came to sell it. Retroactive building ‘permits’ were then hurriedly issued to enable him to sell it.”
Unsuspecting nonentities who end up unexpectedly in a similar situation with a tiny property built with some slight differences to the original permits (decades before by some one else), are not so lucky.
They are made to pay the full price for something someone else did, with an enforcement notice and end up seeing their tiny investment up in smoke. Would it not be worthwhile all round if similar “amnesties” were given to these as well?
What a bunch of sleazy characters and how much they got away with!
Why successive Nationalist governments treated Mintoff and his henchmen with kid gloves is totally incomprehensible and disgusting. Not even a word in Parliament or in the media seem to have been spoken or written about these dubious acquisitions and alleged use of government labour and materials in construction and/or building access to the country property mentioned above.
In the meantime the ‘progressive and moderate Mintoff Labour Party’ has the gall to even mention ‘corruption’ in the direction of the NP
IT could well have been illegal when built but, according to MEPA current policies, any development dating to before 1968 is now automatically sanctioned.
No policy is cast in stone, not even MEPA’s current policies.
There are hundreds if not thousands of private individuals who could benefit enormously from a review of certain policies regarding properties built when MEPA and its current policies were not yet set up.
Not everyone , is “lucky” enough to carry the Mintoff surname.
So let me get this right:
There is a strong possibility that this house was built on land which wasn’t his, that there were no permits to build it and that public employees were used to build it. And the courts awarded him Lm360,000 from tax-payers money and lets him keep the property instead of penalising him and expropriating it.
That they have the audacity to go screaming to the ECHR claiming foul is not surprising. There is a wonderful expression in Maltese for their behaviour that compares their faces to their backsides.
What is bewildering is that the right questions were not asked by the lawyer in question and that the judges in their wisdom thought it fit to dispense with taxpayers’ money in this way. Who were they? They are ultimately responsible for this miscarriage of justice.
What were they afraid of – his wrath or that of his supporters. What sort of justice was this?
It is all too easy to lump the burden on that taxpayer, who gets lumped with also having to pay for the political crimes that occurred under Mintoff’s watch and any other human right abuses too.
Unbelievable!
Class action could be an option. Extended to all those who gained favour with this individual, appropriating themselves of public and private property, other peoples’ business licences and the opportunities lost.
The first step would be a the compilation of a sixteen year long chronological diary of all the abuse designed by Mintoff.
Our own black book.