Silvio Debono of the Seabank: years of pretending to be a PN militant, but really just so Taghna Lkoll and now in the pits with Natius Farrugia, Vince Micallef and JPO
Blue arrow – Ivan Portelli, the sacked police officer who has now been appointed director of operations at the VAT Department; red arrow – Super One journalist and bridegroom Jonathan Attard; green arrow – the Seabank Group’s Silvio Debono; pink arrow – Labour mayor of Zurrieq, who has a court-mandated restraining order in my regard, Natius Farrugia; in front- – police officer turned criminal lawyer Vince MIcallef, part of the Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando/Andy Ellul/Ivan Portelli ‘evil clique’ and Louis Gauci.
Silvio Debono (right) up close and personal with the bridegroom, Super One journalist Jonathan Attard.
Times of Malta reports today:
€28m extension will make Hotel San Antonio Malta’s second biggest
The San Antonio Hotel is set to become the second biggest hotel in Malta, with a €28m project seeing the number of beds growing to over 1,500.
The project is being undertaken by the Seabank Group.
The works were taken in hand in November, when the hotel temporarily closed down. Guests are set to start returning on March 15.
700 workers from 30 companies are working round the clock on the project which involves the building of new floors.
The hotel will have 500 rooms and 80 apartments along with four swimming pools and eco-friendly lighting systems.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat toured the hotel this morning.
Seabank group director Silvio Debono said that in the coming weeks, the company would unveil its brand of hotels which will also include the Seabank in Mellieha. He said the group has invested €68 million in its hotels over the past two years.
The extension of the San Antonio will create 100 new jobs.
—————
The San Antonio Hotel is not owned by the Seabank Group alone. It is also owned by Tony Zahra’s company. And the finance minister, Edward Scicluna, was a director of the hotel-owning company, sitting alongside Silvio Debono and Tony Zahra, for years until he became finance minister a year ago.
What do I mean to imply by this? Absolutely nothing, except that it would be nice if occasionally newspapers put public relations bumph into context.
Here are a couple of photographs which show just how close Silvio Debono of the Seabank Group is to the Labour Party. He was an honoured and intimate guest at the marriage last summer of Super One man Jonathan Attard. Photographs uploaded on Facebook by that fool Natius Farrugia, another guest and part of the group, and blocked or removed soon afterwards demonstrate the nature of Silvio Debono’s – until recently he posed as a great admirer and supporter of the Nationalist Party/government – relationship with the Labour Party and its ‘evil clique’ of camp-followers. He’s really in with them, isn’t he.
Other photos in the same series of the same group of people include Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, part of the same clique.
Silvio Debono got to know them all through Magistrate Consuelo Herrera, her brother the parliamentary secretary for culture, and government planning authority consultant Robert Musumeci, with whom he has had a very close friendship for years.
Several members of this group were spotted last summer at Comino, on a yacht owned by one of them, the men wearing matching ‘red triangles’ no doubt in celebration of Labour’s great victory. Photographs were not taken because my friend who saw all this was moored right up alongside.
Eighty apartments at the San Antonio? My, just in time for the sale of citizenship and those Eur18,000 a year rental contracts. What a country. What a country.
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Make that ‘what a cuntry’.
Now let’s irk the Gonzi Boys some more:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120809/local/seabank-is-reborn-as-malta-s-biggest-hotel.432208
– The resort was re-inaugurated yesterday by the Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi who congratulated the Seabank Group and its chairman Silvio Debono and described the project as a “celebration.”
A celebration of what, for Christ’s sake, unless it was Silvio Debono’s vast fortune? The meaning of words gone awry. Again.
Last election the Seabank hosted Austin Gatt’s entire family and crew, Peppi Azzopardi and virtually the whole of PBS amongst others.
Everything is for sale in this country – it’s the New Socialism.
[Daphne – Nothing new about it. It’s age-old subsistence-survival Mediterranean culture. That’s just the point: it ISN’T new. It’s a failure of progress, with primitive values.]
Yesterday evening on Living TV, Ignatius Farrugia was guest “expert” in “Mariella’s” programme giving his advice on stress and receiving call from viewers and providing them with advice on their stress-related problem.
He was completely out of his depth, talking nonsense and repeatedly using the word psychology when it was very obvious that he does not have a clue what it means.
Stress is a serious business and having a phony person like Ignatius playing expert is dangerous. He waxes the hair off people for a living and is semi-literate, for heaven’s sake. When did he become a stress expert?
Mariella who?
The whole citizenship saga started when ‘developers’ made it a point to raise hell regarding the scheme introduced ca. four years back.
If one had to work it backwards, every concession made, because that’s what the revisions are, point at a strategy worked out by Muscat gradually from the day he was elected leader of the PL and kicked off his personal meetings.
One could say he doesn’t trust these however, preferring to handle all the money himself first, channel any money via Henley to Chetcuti as a second option, albeit under close scrutiny in Mile End, and finally, have the final say in how ‘foreign investment’ is ever spent.
Signs of a control freak who won’t let anyone take the initiative. He thinks his plan requires utter control to achieve perfection. If Mintoff never called a cabinet meeting, Muscat got carte blanche within the party some time back to take all policy decisions autonomously, as the delegates accepted to stand back and watch their ideology lent to a ‘costed roadmap’.
X ‘(allegat) Maghtab ta’ hmieg
L-aqwa li sejjer jorganizza l-birthday party ta’ Eddie Fenech Adami fil-lukanda tieghu.
This backstabber also runs the Labour Party Club in Mellieha.
Heqq issa mhux dawn hawn.
Just thinking aloud here … isn’t President Emeritus Dr. Eddie Fenech Adami celebrating his 80th birthday at the Seabank Hotel this coming weekend ?
Wasn’t Dr. Francis Zammit Dimech a Director there?
Wasn’t Dr. Austin Gatt supporting this hotel’s plan to have the road passing behind it rather than in front of it, having easy access to the beach ? I seem to recall the furore at the time when the Danish Village (GWU owned, I believe) were up in arms.
It seems that it pays to have friends on both sides of the political divide.
[Daphne – This is not a matter of straddling the political fence for convenience. Silvio Debono is part of the Consuelo Herrera/Jose Herrera/Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando crowd, which means that anybody in the Nationalist Party who takes him into his confidence is exposed to them. The Nationalist Party was exposed to so much damage over the last few years precisely because it refused to acknowledge or even see these connections through which useful information got out, and I am not necessarily referring to Silvio Debono, though his longtime association with the Herreras was an obvious problem and more fool anyone in the PN who refused to see it.]
Well said – I agree.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140205/local/embassy-in-washington-spends-39000-on-car-removal-of-trees.505622#.UvJMaMId-TM
And the PN are holding a party to celebrate Eddie Fenech Adami’s birthday at HIS hotel. About time that these people are boycotted.
So is Lija council.
The previous government wanted to reroute the Marfa road (the one leading leading to Cirkewwa) in order to accomodate Silvio Debono and link the hotel with a private beach. Silvio Debono wanted to take over and enclose the first part of Mellieha Bay.
Marisa has been busy!
Embassy in Washington spends €39,000 on car, removal of trees
The Maltese embassy in Washington has spent almost €39,000 on a new car for the ambassador and the removal of trees from her official residence.
Foreign Minister George Vella told Nationalist MP Marthese Portelli in reply to a parliamentary question that €8,241 were spent on the removal of several ‘hazardous’ trees at the ambassador’s house in Washington.
€30,520 were spent on the purchase of a new official car, a BMW Rockville.
The Tree of Liberty.
That’s the most hazardous of all.
Hey Baxxter. Remember the novel ‘The Thorn Birds’? Just watch.
Isn’t that some 1970s romantic movie?
Yes. friend. Figured you would understand how the birds impaled themselves on the thorns. As will this bunch of incompetents.
Then it wouldn’t be in my line at all. I’ll ask the mater and pater, for whom the 1970s was the Golden Years, and not in that sense.
Rockville is the BMW agent in Washington.
http://www.bmwrockville.com/index.htm
How is a tree hazardous?
Daphne 7 assistant police commissioners have been appointed today and 3 deputy commissioners were appointed last week. And yet our police force cannot track down a maniac who is still murdering innocent animals brutally in the Mosta area. This country is a disgrace! Not only should Manuel Mallia step down but the entire newly elected police leadership including the commissioner himself. Such inefficiency and lack of results makes me ashamed to be Maltese.
Thanks, Daphne. Dan il-blog biss irid ikun biex juri z-zejt li jitla f’wicc l-ilma. Prosit u kompli sejra hekk.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Cabinet-archives-Indolent-workers-should-be-boarded-out-20140205
Some cabinet decisions;
Can’t be fagged to work? have a pension instead.
Introduce young people to the thrills of bulk buying. That means you Daphne.
Consider how to dismiss claims that violence was state sanctioned. Dunno, how about frame ups?
And the best one, quote,
“Wherever possible and practical we should change the policy to employ males in industry by employing women instead”. We risked a nation of crossdressers.
‘Posed’ is a very important word here. I’ll say this in Maltese so that he understands it: mercenarju, injorant, basla u gidra.
So I guess “Austin Gatt’s” plan to pass the road behind the hotel rather than in front of it will be back on the cards now will it?
Oh the joy of seeing the placards down by the beach. Legality Now, ejja.
Or maybe not.
One also needs to keep in mind that Silvio Debono financed the entire refurbishing of the MLP club in Mellieha.
He was frequently seen with Jose Herrera over there as well. He was also partying in the main street in front of the MLP club on Sunday following the election results.
Whilst I will not comment on the content of your article, I am rather surprised that you have been so quick to submit this piece without proper research on the subject. I would expect any serious journalist/blogger to confirm facts before posting something.
You write: “The San Antonio Hotel is not owned by the Seabank Group alone. It is also owned by Tony Zahra’s company.”
That statement is factually incorrect. The San Antonio Hotel is wholly owned by the Seabank Group. Tony Zahra’s company no longer holds any interest in the company/hotel.
Whilst I do not comment on the content or intended message of your post, please, do not be so quick to attack something, unless you are completely sure of what you are writing.
[Daphne – I suggest you read my subsequent post. Tony Zahra sold his shares to Silvio Debono just five weeks ago. So please don’t be disingenuous. They were co-owners of the Hotel San Antonio for the previous 13/14 years minimum, until five weeks ago.]
Granted, as the subsequent post was submitted quite a few hours after this one, I hadn’t yet read it.
The above-wording in this article is still technically incorrect though :)
Whilst I do not always agree with the nature or rationale of some of your posts, this one being an example, I still find them entertaining, so thanks!
I think the renovation of this hotel will do wonders for the area of Bugibba and Qawra, an area which is in serious need of investment and revitalisation. I do not see the relevance of any political ties. All I see is significant investment in the local tourism sector.
[Daphne – My post about Tony Zahra selling his shareholding to Silvio Debono was published around three hours before you sent in your comment, so your first sentence makes no sense at all.
If you are a Debono stooge, which seems to me screamingly obvious, have the backbone to say so and give your name. After all, I use mine. I am not five years old and can see through false fronts.]
I did not come across the post until you mentioned it in your reply and I thus acknowledged that fact in the first sentence. I do not scroll through a read your every post, so I will not read everything!
There is nothing false about my comments. I just think such investments are positive for the country, particularly when looking at long-term job creation. I might be wrong and you and others may disagree, but its my opinion, and I think I have a right to it without being called a stooge or a five-year old. Good night.
[Daphne – In my long experience running this website, when an anonymous person who has never commented before rushes in to defend somebody or something while using the stiff terminology of disinterest, he or she is generally a stooge for whoever or whatever it is he is defending.
I would brush up on my comprehension skills in your position. I did not call you a five-year-old. I merely said that I am not one myself. Silvio Debono does not invest in his hotel for the good of the country, but for the good of himself. If he cared about the good of the country, he would not have helped Labour to government. Any good Debono may have done for the country by spending money on upgrading his hotel is sorely eclipsed by the disaster he has helped wreak on this same country by acting to foist a Labour government on it. If you can’t see that, then you are really out to lunch.]
J Camilleri sounds like Arthur Gauci from Mellieha.
San Antonio has really turned out to be a masterpiece. Well done to that idiot who eased the height restrictions for hotels.