Michael Falzon gave Gaffarena the land on which he had squatted

Screen from Times of Malta print edition – Thursday 11th June

It’s just so unbelievably corrupt, isn’t it. The extensive portfolio of land and buildings which Michael Falzon – parliamentary secretary responsible for the Government Property Division – signed away to his long-time friend and hunting buddy Marco Gaffarena includes land at Tal-Handaq on which Gaffarena squatted and built illegal structures and a huge swimming-pool, and which he runs as an illegal entertainment venue with somebody who was busted for dealing in cocaine and cannabis seven years ago.

The place is actually named after the drug-dealer: Antoine ‘Ic-Cavett’ Azzopardi, who ran a similar operation in Mtarfa which was shut down when he was busted.

So here we have a situation in which a corrupt contractor, who built illegally on public land, and who operates the place with a drug-dealer as an illegal entertainment venue shamelessly publicised all over the internet, is REWARDED by the government rather than investigated by the police and slammed into cell with his cocaine-dealing buddy.

Which reminds me that his cocaine-dealing buddy’s defence counsel was a lawyer from the ex-Police Minister’s firm, Emmanuel Mallia & Associates. Did his trial slip off the radar, or what? Seven years is a long time in which we have heard nothing about that case.

I’m beginning to have some increasingly clear ideas on who’s running the cocaine operation, with Antoine Ic-Cavett as a stooge.

Malta Today, around three years ago, ran a big story about a company in which the Gaffarenas are shareholders along with Labour MP Joe Sammut. That was the big headline for them. But if they had looked a little closer, they would have noticed that another shareholder has the same name and a remarkably similar identity to a Maltese man – sometimes mistakenly identified as Italian in the Australian press – wanted in Australia for running a significant percentage of the cocaine entering that country.

The Australian press reports that he takes care of ‘quality control’ for the cocaine trafficked by the Neapolitan Camorra. This man has a registered office in London which is nothing more than a shared flat – I was in London three years ago when I researched this, and checked it out – and a deep search in the British companies registry, which is all online – reveals that he repeatedly incorporates companies and shuts them down after a short while.

Malta is in the grip of drug money. You can feel it.