The Malta Tourism Authority is paying €50,000 a year for an Msida property, which is owned by the father-in-law of the State entity’s chairman Gavin Gulia.
The matter has been under the spotlight of a parliamentary committee which is probing the 2018 accounts of the MTA.
Located in Valley Road Msida, The Lodge belongs to Lino Mousu, who is Gulia’s father-in-law. On May 20, the Public Accounts Committee had asked the MTA’s former CEO Paul Bugeja, who was summoned to testify, to provide information on the persons involved in the lease of this property, the contract extension signed in 2017, and a copy of the structural report on the building.
However, this documentation seems to have gone missing. Last week MTA CEO Johann Buttigieg wrote to the committee saying that they had yet been unable to trace such documentation but would “oblige to continue to search” at their own headquarters.
The lease predates Gulia's appointment in 2013 as MTA chairman. Shift News have claimed that the villa's annual rent has more than doubled in the ensuing years, from the original rate of €20,000 per year.
The issue will be once again on the agenda of the next PAC meeting, which is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, when Gulia himself is expected to testify.
Bugeja had told the committee he had not been aware that the villa belonged to Gulia’s father-in-law when signing the new contract in 2017. However, he insisted that the chairman had no conflict of interest as he was not involved in the negotiations with the villa owner.
€4.5 million VistaJet contract
Apart from the lease of this property, the MTA has been in the firing line over a controversial €4.5 million marketing contract awarded to business aviation company VistaJet for the period between 2016 and 2018.
Opposition MPs who command a majority in the PAC have cried foul over this deal, saying there was little evidence to justify this expenditure, of which the MTA board members had not been informed at the time.
Moreover, there have been conflicting versions between MTA and ministry officials on the manner in which the payments had been handled and the way in which the deal had been piloted. The former CEO had insisted he had no direct involvement in the talks with VistaJet, saying the matter had been handled almost exclusively by the Tourism Ministry.