‘In bad taste’: Joseph Muscat defends dead judge in Fortina report scandal

Joseph Muscat has defended a dead judge accused of “suppressing” a report that valued public land in Sliema at more than double the amount Fortina Group paid for it.

The former prime minister said he found the National Audit Office (NAO) probe implicating former Lands Authority board of governor’s chief, Lino Farrugia Sacco, to have been written “in very bad taste”.

He said the NAO’s report had burdened everything on a seasoned former member of the judiciary who has since passed away and cannot defend himself.

“I am more than sure that had Judge Farrugia Sacco still been alive, he would have replied very solidly to many assumptions and loaded statements in the report," Muscat said.

“While the author of the NAO report states there is a serious limitation in scope, he goes on to totally ignore it, with the reader barely realising that the main decision maker died and was not able to give his account of events".

Farrugia Sacco was found to have withheld an external valuation which placed a minimum figure of €18m for the land, more than the €8.1m paid by Fortina, based on an internal valuation by the Lands Authority.

Parliament voted in July 2019 to allow Fortina to use the land to develop apartments and commercial activities against a payment of €8.1m, based on the internal valuation that did not cover all parcels of the land in question.

The public land was originally granted to Fortina exclusively for tourism purposes.

Meeting with Muscat

Fortina formally requested a change of use for the land in 2017. A Fortina representative told the auditor general they had met Muscat “at some point during the process” to push for progress on the transaction, which had stalled.

According to Fortina, the focus of the discussion was to address delays and ensure that the project could move forward.

Fortina said the matter was then referred to Muscat’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, who the NAO say was involved in the “wider effort” to conceal the more costly €18m valuation.

Nine months after parliament approved the deal, based on a government motion, Muscat started to receive “consultancy” payments from Fortina.

Asked about this sequence of events, Muscat said that had the NAO thought he had any involvement in the deal, he was sure they would have said so.

The NAO report warns of the ethical concerns related to revolving doors, where officials in positions of influence within government move to related private sector employment.

Muscat said that had this remark by the NAO been directed towards him, they would not have used the term “officials within government”.

He was also critical of the methodology used by the NAO to reach its own valuation of €21m for the Fortina land, saying it even goes against calculations made by the auditor general in previous reports. 

“Furthermore, it even contradicts the current legislation governing valuations, which was not challenged and, thus, accepted, by the entire parliament," he said.

“I look forward to someone coming up with the valuation according to the current legal notice and comparing it to the valuation under scrutiny. That is a necessary exercise that, since the NAO failed to do, should be embarked upon by the government or the media."