Alex Borg breached ethics for misleading comments on Fort Chambray

PN MP Alex Borg was found to have breached ethics by the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life, after he made misleading comments about the restoration of Fort Chambray.

Standards Commissioner Joseph Azzopardi asked Borg to issue a written apology, but he refused. Therefore, the case will now be heard before the parliamentary standards committee.

In June 2024, a bipartisan parliamentary committee, which Borg was part of, unanimously agreed to amend Fort Chambray’s original concession, which would allow for extensive parts of the site to be transferred to new investors.

The amended concession also placed the responsibility to restore the fort on the government.

Former PL MEP candidate Jesmond Bonello had asked the commissioner to investigate comments Borg made on Facebook on July 1, 2024, where he claimed that the new concession agreement placed the responsibility to restore the bastions on the new owners.

“To put it simply, the reinforcement [of the barracks] is now the responsibility of the new owner,” Borg said on Facebook.

Shortly after, on July 7, in an interview with MaltaToday, Borg reiterated this: “The government was supposed to repair the walls. Now that the government failed and didn’t do that, private investors are stepping in to carry out repairs of the bastions themselves”.

In his report, the commissioner found that in the context of both these comments, Borg never mentioned that the government is obliged to restore the fort’s bastions.

The commissioner noted how making false comments does not automatically mean that a member of parliament breached ethics.

In this case, the commissioner found that Borg breached ethics as he made these misleading comments to justify his vote in favour of the amended concession.

However, the commissioner also noted how Borg later corrected himself when he told Times of Malta that “eventually yes”, the money spent by new concessionaires on restoration works will be reimbursed through tax exemptions on their capital gains.

“Thus, Hon. Borg acknowledged that the government is obliged to pay for the restoration of the bastions and corrected the version of events he had given in the comments referred to by the complainant.”

As such, the commissioner found that the complaint was not grievous, and it did not need to be sent to the parliamentary standards committee. He simply asked Borg to send a written apology.

However, Borg failed to send an apology by April 4, and even after the deadline was extended to April 11, Borg still did not reply.

Therefore, the standards commissioner submitted the report to the parliamentary standards committee to deal with the case further.

Plans to develop Fort Chambray were approved by the Planning Authority last December, which gave two separate permits filed by developer Michael Caruana the green light.

Caruana intends to demolish the British-era barracks save for their facade, flanks and portico and rebuild them on another part of the site. The area will host a hotel, residential units and commercial facilities.

Correction: A previous article misidentified the bastions as barracks. The error is regretted.