“Min ma jaħxix ma jagħmilx frieħ” – John Dalli, consultant to Malta’s Prime Minister

I had an email yesterday (reproduced below with her consent) from an old friend who left Malta many years ago and who had just read this post about John Dalli, Marsovin and the land in Qormi. She was a lawyer at MIMCOL (Malta Investment Management Company Ltd – the state corporation which the incoming Nationalist government had set up to manage state-owned assets) and the Malta Development Corpporation in the early 1990s.

When she read about the ongoing government accusations that Vassallo Builders had bought the Qormi land from the government in 2009, she said, she couldn’t understand how this was possible because it was Marsovin which held the concession. “My first thought was that the Marsovin concession must have reverted back to the government, because otherwise the government wouldn’t have been able to deal with Vassallo. I remember the story of the scandalous lease to Marsovin when it happened back then. Then I read your report.”

She continued: “Dalli tried to do the same with the Dragonara Casino in 1990/1991. It took me a great deal of effort, with the support of Louis Galea (Joinwell Ltd boss, not the ex-minister, since deceased – at the time state corporation chairman), Professor Joe Ganado and George Bonello Dupuis, then Finance Minister (furious, and with a long string of swearing) to stop the deal from going through.

“Dalli, who was Minister of Economic Services and really pushing to give the Dragonara Casino to an Austrian company for 99 years, threw me out of his office, saying I had set off a chain of events that was blocking ‘a good deal for government’ (yeah, right). I remember the expression he used: “Min ma jaħxix ma jagħmilx frieħ”.

“The company to which he had wanted to hand the Dragonara Casino for a century went bankrupt just two years later. Luckily, the emphyteusis was for five years and with stringent conditions attached, so the government got it back. 

“Professor  Ganado represented the Austrian company on the deal, but despite being their lawyer he played his part in resisting the 99-year-lease demand which Dalli was pushing through the Malta Development Corporation. The Lands Department was not involved, because the property had been assigned already (I do not recall how) by the government to Casma Ltd, which back then managed the Dragonara Casino. The government of Malta was the sole shareholder in Casma Ltd, which was in a very bad financial situation.”

“Min ma jahxiex ma jaghmilx frieh”