Government pays Corinthia company €365,000 direct order for 3-day Agrifair

Aqra bil-Malti.

Taxpayers have forked out a direct order of €365,000 to hire the Malta Fairs and Conventions Centre’s (MFCC) tent in Ta’ Qali for a three-day agricultural fair organised by the agriculture ministry led by Minister Anton Refalo.

Information published in the government gazette shows that a Corinthia Group company, which owns the MFCC and pays just €20,000 a year for occupying large tracts of public land in Ta’ Qali, was paid the extraordinary sum for using the tent for just a weekend.

A few days later, the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) paid tens of thousands to organise the so-called Public Service Week—an event the government held to boost its image in the middle of the electoral campaign.

As in the last general elections campaign, Labour used the MFCC venue to end its MEP election campaign. It organised a concert in which Labour leader Robert Abela made his final speech asking the public for a vote of confidence in himself.

The amount the Labour Party paid Corinthia for using the venue is unclear.

The MFCC tent was recently in the news due to its latest application to extend its 18-year-old ‘temporary’ permit for another five years.

Just a few days before last Saturday’s elections, Corinthia managed to regularise a raft of illegalities at the venue, including fences, gates, substations, a car park and other tents.

The Planning Authority (PA), heavily influenced by the OPM through its CEO Oliver Magro, approved the latest regularisation request by imposing a €50,000 fine – less than one day’s income from the tent if hired by the government or its agencies.

At the same time, the Planning Authority gave Corinthia another five-year ‘temporary’ permit for the venue.

Reiterating the same conditions it had imposed in the past renewals, which the tent’s owners never respected, the Planning Authority insisted that “a condition is being included where the proposal is valid for five years and where before the expiry of this period, a full development application shall be required to be submitted to assess the comprehensive development of the site in accordance with the conditions as listed in Policy NWTQ 36 of the Ta’ Qali Action Plan.”

These are the same conditions the Planning Authority has repeatedly imposed since 2006, when it first issued its so-called ‘temporary permit’.