Expropriation law being abused for government purchase of real estate from cronies

It is now amply clear that the government is using the expropriation law – which is meant as a last-resort option for the acquisition of land for roads and so on – as a means to buy real estate from party cronies.

The government does not need this real estate but is doing its cronies a favour. Government expropriation and the Government Property Division are in the prime minister’s portfolio, though his PS Michael Falzon, who reports to him, has so far taken all the flak.

The Malta Independent on Sunday reports today that the government has used the expropriation law to buy a tiny house – with a footprint of 93 square metres – on the hill up to the Victoria citadel for almost half a million euros.

Architects commissioned by the newspapers have put the value at a maximum limit of 300,000 euros. The hugely inflated value is just one part of the scandal. The fundamental scandal is that the house was bought at all.

The house was bought from a family of Labour activists and candidates called Vella Muscat aka Vella Muskat. One of them, Keith Vella Muskat, works in Minister for Gozo Anton Refalo’s Construction and Maintenance Unit and has been linked to work carried out abusively on private property over the last two years, for which Anton Refalo has not been censured as his predecessor Giovanna Debono has been.

The house was valued at 460,000 euros by government-employed architect John Spiteri, who also undervalued government property which was given to Marco Gaffarena in exchange for a fractional share in a house in Old Mint Street, Valletta – in the story which led to the snow-balling scandal which has since embroiled corrupt police inspectors Roderick and Daniel Zammit and their father Ray ‘Il-Mulej’, the former acting Commissioner of Police.

The government already owns several empty houses in the Gozo citadel.