Government to enable Anglu Xuereb to regularise illegal Qawra lidos

Aqra bil-Malti

The government will be asking parliament to approve a new resolution so developer and hotelier Anglu Xuereb can regularise the 37-year-old illegal occupation of large swaths of coastal public land in Qawra.

In the latest sellout of public land, the government has arranged for Xuereb and his AX Group to get the land for only a €2 million fine, payable in ten-year instalments.

In return for this new out-of-court settlement agreement, the resolution, seen by The Shift, proposes that Xuereb and the government drop their court cases against each other, which have been stalled in court for over 20 years.

As a result, AX Group, which operates the Suncrest Hotel, now rebranded AX ODYCY Hotel and other tourism facilities just across the road from its illegal lidos, will get a new and now legal 65-year concession on the lidos by paying an annual ground rent of €138,000.

The Shift is informed that Lands Minister Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi is expected to submit the resolution to the National Audit Accounts Parliamentary Committee next week.

According to procedure, the parliamentary committee needs unanimity to approve this new arrangement.  If the Opposition disagrees, the resolution would then move to the plenary of the House of Representatives.

At that stage, the same resolution only needs a simple majority, which can be easily carried through the Labour Party’s majority.

The Sunny Coast and Suncrest lidos are spread over 5,583 square metres of Qawra’s coastline.

They were developed on land illegally occupied by Anglu Xuereb in 1987 when the corrupt former Labour minister Lorry Sant was responsible for public land.

At the time, Xuereb did not have any title to the land despite building two large lidos.

Since then, the two lidos have been expanded and modernised, serving hundreds of thousands of clients and generating millions for the AX Group.

While the Planning Authority issued several enforcement orders against the illegalities, and the Lands Authority started court proceedings against the AX Group in 1991, none of the authorities under all administrations since then have ever intervened to close the illegal lidos.

Like most developers and hoteliers, AX Group has continued to benefit under different administrations.

Meanwhile, court procedures were left open-ended and never delivered a conclusion.

Last year, in preparation for the latest resolution, the government declassified Anglu Xuereb’s lidos from the public domain law, which excludes development on the coast, to grant permission.

Lands Authority CEO Robert Vella, involved in the closed-door discussions with the AX Group, had told parliament that this declassification was the only way the illegal lidos could be passed onto Xuereb.

According to the draft resolution, this arrangement will now make it possible for Xuereb to invest some €60 million in refurbishing his hotels in the area.