Something tells me they’re planning to ‘buy back’ Engerer’s lease as they did with the Café Premier

We have news of a three-storey car park planned for state-owned land beneath the playground on the Sliema front, near the tower in the Exiles area.

It should worry me that I’m beginning to think like them, but the first thing I thought of was: they’re planning to ‘buy back’ Chris Engerer’s lease on the public land just beneath the playground, where he has the bar on the foreshore, in a deal similar to what they did with the Café Premier in Valletta.

Engerer, whose son Cyrus clearly has the prime minister by the short-and-curlies, has not paid his 20,000-euro-a-year rent since he signed the lease on that land. I had written about it here two years ago. Chris Engerer is in his late 60s, has a lifelong history of drug problems, and is known to the police. A government buy-back will have him sorted.

Cyrus Engerer and Randolph Debattista on holiday in Thailand, funded by public money.

Chris Engerer acquired the title of lease to his beach bar from the government in 2012 and has never once paid the rent.