The Prime Minister should resign over the “scandalous” and “bizarre” way he was personally involved in negotiations to buy back Cafe Premier’s 65-year lease to the tune of €4.2 million, the Nationalist Party said yesterday.
Commenting on the National Audit’s Office damning findings of its investigation into the bailout, PN deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami called on Joseph Muscat to come clean on the agreement that saw the government pay off the debts of private company Cities Entertainment.
“Nowhere in the world would you encounter a prime minister who personally participates and negotiates an agreement with a private company to solve its financial difficulties,” Dr Fenech Adami said.
“In normal circumstances, a prime minister faced with a report such as that of the Auditor General would resign. But Joseph Muscat’s yardstick is different from the one he used before the general election.”
He noted that Cafe Premier, in Valletta, closed its doors the day after the general election and questioned whether this was a coincidence.
He challenged Dr Muscat to specify the nature of the relationship he shared with Mario Camilleri, part-owner of Cities Entertainment, which held the lease of the café. “Did he meet Mario Camilleri before the general election? When did the negotiations truly start?”
The NAO said taxpayers forked out €210,000 in commissions as part of the €4.2 million bailout.
Referring to the report, Dr Fenech Adami said the Prime Minister had also paid off Cities Entertainment’s VAT and national insurance as well as the debts it owed to other private companies such as Banif Bank and Golden Harvest.
Shadow justice minister Jason Azzopardi condemned the “scandalous, obscene” priority given to the Cafe Premier lease so soon after Labour was elected to power in March 2013. Despite the initial urgency in acquiring the property, the place still lies in a state of abandon.
Dr Azzopardi noted that Mr Camilleri had sent an e-mail to Dr Muscat just a few days after the election, in April, which was answered by the Prime Minister himself.
When a meeting was called, the only people present were the Prime Minister’s consultant, John Sciberras, his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and the principal permanent secretary, Mario Cutajar, apart from Dr Muscat and Mr Camilleri. Dr Muscat did not involve or seek the technical expertise of the Land Department, Dr Azzopardi said. The initial offer made by Dr Muscat was of “€3.5 million with the possibility of negotiating upwards to €4 million” and then put the final offer at €3.97 million.
“But that was not so because the commission was added to it,” Dr Azzopardi said.
“Incidentally, the NAO tells us that the offer tabled by the government and that proposed by third parties were identical. So the Prime Minister did not even need to spend the taxpayers’ money because a private company was offering the exact same deal,” he added.
PN lands spokesman Ryan Callus said there was absolutely no justification in using people’s taxes.
“Since Camilleri did not honour the terms of his contract, there were legal processes the government could have resorted to, to eject him out of the premises and fast,” Mr Callus said.
In a statement, the Office of the Prime Minister insisted the government acted quickly to recover millions of euros owed to it by the Cafe Premier owners while ensuring the prime site property was returned to the public.
The choice was between lengthy court litigation that would have left the property unutilised for years or paying the owners for the remainder of the lease period, the OPM said. “The allegation that the Prime Minister had some form of agreement with the owners of Cafe Premier clearly shows that the Nationalist Party measures others by its own yardstick,” the statement said.