Lands Authority governors overruled on objections to Villa Rosa tender

At least two members of the Lands Authority’s Board of Governors objected to the issue of a tender for the sale of an alley in St George’s Bay for just €134,000 when an internal valuation put it at a market value of €3 million, but they were overruled.

The Shift recently revealed that the alley was sold to Anton Camilleri, known as Tal-Franċiż, for a pittance on the eve of the 2022 general elections. He needed the alley to complete his plan to turn Villa Rosa into a €300 million project.

The Shift has now confirmed that governors Odette Lewis, an architect by profession and the wife of Labour’s Organising Secretary William Lewis, and Rebekah Borg, representing the PN opposition on the Board, objected to the continuation of the process. They insisted the tender should be scrapped.

Both insisted that the tender should be scrapped as the value at which it was issued made no sense and did not take into consideration its development potential. If the government wanted to give the alley to Tal-Franċiż, it should do so through a parliamentary resolution for the sake of transparency.

Despite these strong objections, the two governors were overruled by Chairman John Vassallo, backed by CEO Robert Vella.

Instead of pausing the process for further deliberations on the controversial tender, Vassallo decided that most of the board agreed to award the tender to Tal-Franċiż for less than the price of a one-bedroom flat.

The governors present who did not intervene and backed the chairman’s stand were Ernest Azzopardi, Lauren Ellul, Joseph Scalpello, Cleaven Tabone, Paul Mifsud and Labour MP Alex Muscat. They were all appointed by Prime Minister Robert Abela.

The Shift revealed that a valuation report drawn up by three veteran architects for the Lands Authority concluded that the 620-square-metre alley had a market value of €2.9 million. Yet it was given to Camilleri for just €134,000.

The tender closed two days before the general elections, and Camilleri, through his company, Garnet Investments Ltd, was the only bidder.

Investigations by The Shift showed that the Lands Authority and Camilleri held various meetings before the tender was issued, designed explicitly for Tal-Franċiż and his project.

Instead of issuing the alley for an outright sale, as is standard practice, the tender specified that “the passage cannot be obstructed with any structures up to the height of 5.5 metres.”

This meant that Camilleri could use the alley, giving him the right of passage to his massive project from the shoreline of St George’s Bay. He could even build his towers, one as high as 34 storeys over the alley and join the two sides of his 50,000 square metre Villa Rosa grounds intersected by this alley.

This tender and its manoeuvres by the Lands Authority and senior government officials are now part of an ongoing investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO) called for by several NGOs.

Just a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Robert Abela ordered the Planning Authority to change the planning rules of the Villa Rosa site to accommodate Camilleri’s project.

Without the change in the local plan, Camilleri’s project could not happen.