An audit investigation has found that 25 new encroachment permits were granted in the three months before the 2013 election.

Of these, 13 were authorised by former Nationalist minister Jason Azzopardi, the National Audit Office said in a report tabled in Parliament yesterday.

The number is a far cry from the 100 claimed by media reports, which prompted government MPs on the Public Accounts Committee to ask for an NAO investigation.

The NAO particularly flagged a case in which Dr Azzopardi used ministerial discretion to grant encroachment rights on a garage in Santa Luċija days before the last election.

The NAO was tasked to investigate the issuance of encroachment permits between December 2012 and March 2013 when Dr Azzopardi was land minister.

The NAO found that the 25 permits issued before the election represented a marginal increase over the 20 permits issued during the same period a year earlier but a threefold increase over the 2010-2011 period.

However, the NAO pointed out that 11 of the encroachment permits were issued between February 23 and March 8, 2013 – the two weeks in the run-up to the election. Eight of these were authorised by the minister.

One of these was for a garage in his constituency of Santa Luċija. The former minister’s intervention happened when the Government Property Department was in the process of preparing a public call for tenders for the garage. The decision favoured the last applicant to have expressed an interest in the garage.

The NAO deemed his intervention to be unwarranted, even though Dr Azzopardi’s intervention came with the condition that the encroachment had to be of a temporary nature and should not prejudice the call for tenders.

“This office is of the opinion that intervention at this level should be avoided,” the NAO said.

Three residents living in the same block as the garage had shown interest in the property between January and April 2012, when it was vacated by the Works Department. In November 2012, the Government Property Department received a request from a fourth individual.

Three days after the fourth request was received, the department decided to issue a call for tenders, and the proposal was drawn up in February 2013 by a government architect.

25 permits granted in three months before 2013 election

However, the NAO found that on March 5, by which time no call for tenders was issued, Dr Azzopardi requested the issuance of an encroachment permit in favour of the fourth person.

The ‘temporary’ encroachment was terminated last month.

Of particular interest is a note the NAO extracted from the property department files about the state of lawlessness in Gozo while probing the granting of an encroachment permit to a Xlendi restaurant.

The note from the Land director stated: “It appears that most establishments in Gozo are not covered by Mepa permits, not least this establishment. It is suggested that the encroachment permit be issued, bearing in mind that [it] is already in existence and the site is being availed of, subject that a Mepa permit is applied for within two weeks and in hand within six months.”

This represented a change in stance by the property department, which had previously objected to issuing an encroachment permit since the applicant had already started making use of the site without the relevant clearances.

In this case the ministry had tried to intervene by warning the property department that unless a temporary permit was issued the restaurant would have no choice but to close down.

The property department rebutted this assertion but only three months later, a few weeks before the general election, changed its mind.

In a reaction, Dr Azzopardi recalled that in 2013 the Prime Minister had accused him of having issued more than 100 encroachment permits in the two months before the election.

There was no breach of the law, Dr Azzopardi said, adding that regarding the Sta Lucija garage, it involved a one-car garage where a pensioner had asked that the encroachment permit be issued, and he, as minister, authorised the encroachment, in terms of the law. But, as the auditor confirmed, this was without prejudice to a public call for tenders, he said.

kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com