Mark Gaffarena found guilty of illegally keeping dangerous animals

Updated 10.25pm with MSPCA reaction

Controversial businessman Mark Gaffarena has been found guilty of illegally keeping dangerous animals, including a puma, tigers and a lemur in two sites in Żebbuġ and Qormi.

He was handed a 17-month sentence, suspended for 30 months, given a €32,000 fine and disqualified from applying for a permit to keep animals for the next 15 years. The animals were also confiscated by authorities, at Gaffarena’s expense.

Gaffarena, who gained widespread notoriety for his role in a controversial Valletta expropriation deal in 2015, had previously harboured ambitions to open a zoo in Żebbuġ, but these plans were thwarted when the Planning Authority denied his application.

On Tuesday, a court found that he had nonetheless been keeping several exotic and dangerous animals illegally in unsafe, inadequate enclosures and without having them registered with authorities.

In 2016, Gaffarena had sought to take advantage of a government amnesty for people who kept dangerous animals by applying for a permit to keep a puma, a lion, four monkeys and a lemur at a site in Żebbuġ.

However, his application was turned down after inspections found several other wild animals on site, kept in substandard conditions.

Several officials from the Veterinary Regulation Directorate testified that subsequent inspections kept throwing up surprises.

During a 2019 inspection, the lion was nowhere to be found, presumed to have died, replaced by three new tigers and more monkeys than listed on his original application.

In a 2023 inspection, the lemur cage was gone, with inspectors only finding the tigers and puma at the site.

Inspectors also learned of a second site, in the Tal-Ħandaq area of Qormi, where Gaffarena was keeping wild animals, despite never having notified authorities.

Inspections on the Qormi site found lions, leopards, tigers brought over from Żebbuġ and several monkeys.

Meanwhile, inspectors found that the animals were being kept in poor conditions, particularly in the Żebbuġ site. Inspectors described the site as dirty, cramped and prone to water leaks.

Part of the indoor area where animals were being kept had collapsed, with one witness telling the court “the enclosure was not adequate to host the animals, the state of repair was not at all adequate”.

In her judgment, Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech said that Gaffarena was keeping the animals “for his own enjoyment, without the slightest thought for their welfare”.

In total, Gaffarena was found to have been keeping 18 animals illegally.

However, Frendo Dimech said, despite the poor conditions in which they were kept, the prosecution had failed to demonstrate that the animals were suffering pain or a shortage of food.

'Clear gap'

Reacting to the conviction, the Malta Society for the Protection and Care of Animals (MSPCA) said the case highlighted a "clear gap" between legislation and its effectiveness. 

"Beyond the individual case, it raises legitimate concerns about enforcement, oversight, and whether the current system is sufficiently preventive", the charity wrote in a Facebook post.

"Malta’s reliance on a negative list system, where species are permitted unless specifically prohibited, creates inherent limitations. It allows certain high-risk or unsuitable animals to enter private ownership before they have been properly assessed, leaving authorities to intervene only after problems arise."

The MSPCA advocated instead for the introduction of a 'positive list', where only select species are allowed and those not on the list are automatically prohibited.

That approach, already introduced in other European countries, would provide greater clarity for owners while supporting more effective enforcement, the organisation said.

It reproduced a comment from Eurogroup for Animals, which called for an EU-wide positive list defining which species are suitable to be kept as pets.