Five people have been cleared of causing irreparable damage to a wall overlooking the Cittadella ditch during development works in 2018.
The incident occurred during demolition and excavation works at the rear end of an 18th-century house of character, scheduled as Grade II property, on Sir Adrian Dingli Street, overlooking Victoria’s It-Tokk. It was being converted into a boutique hotel.
In July 2019, the Planning Authority sought criminal action against an architect, a contractor and three company directors.
Four years on, all five were cleared of causing irreparable damage upon evidence that the demolition works were in line with planning permits and that the structure - weakened by two “cardinal defects” - was not part of the fortifications and thus not cultural heritage.
The three judgments were delivered earlier this month against Saviour Micallef, 61, Anthony George Bugeja, 37 and Mark Agius, 35, Joseph Agius, 40 and Maria Agius, 31, as architect, contractor and directors respectively.
When delivering judgment, the court observed the defence had voiced concern that throughout the proceedings, there appeared to have been attempts to keep certain evidence under wraps.
The court itself observed that the defence played an important role in putting forward crucial evidence.
That evidence included correspondence between the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage (SCH) and the PA, the testimony of two Cittadella employees who witnessed the collapse, as well as the approved permit for restoration works on the Citadel walls.
But what was even more concerning was the fact that for five long years, the accused faced criminal action for allegedly causing, through negligence, irreversible damage to a part of the Gozo Cittadella fortifications when the SCH itself had informed the police, after the collapse, that the structure “had no evident value, certainly no value as a fortification”.
The collapse
The boutique hotel project was undertaken by the Agius siblings as directors of Ben Hotels Limited, with the back wall of the property overlooking the ditch.
On April 18, 2018, at around 9.30am, two employees at the Cittadella’s administrative office heard the sound of “cracking wood" coming from the site.
All of a sudden, they saw part of the wall collapse while the rest of it dangled for a while before collapsing onto the side of a nearby building housing a cinema. The wall was 13.5-metre high and 10 metres wide.
In July 2019, the PA sought criminal action against all five people allegedly responsible for the incident which had damaged that portion of cultural heritage.
Last year, a superior court upheld an appeal by the Attorney General and ordered proceedings against the contractor and the developers to be heard afresh after all four were acquitted.
The judge presiding over the appeal had concluded that the Magistrates’ Court hearing the case in the first place had not followed proper procedure, had discarded the findings of court experts and that the PA had not been admitted as parte civile.
The case was subsequently assigned to Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech who delivered judgment last week.
Expert’s conclusions
Court-appointed architecture expert Alex Torpiano concluded that the collapse of the wall had been triggered by the demolition of rooms on either side of the backyard of the property.
To make matters worse, the floor of the yard was lowered by a further metre or so, thus resulting in a 14.5 metre-high structure, that was not secured to adjacent walls, caving in under the pressure of soil and other material accumulated behind it.
Works were being undertaken to open two windows and a door in that wall abutting the citadel ditch.
Stone slabs were removed to re-create a doorway which had previously existed in the wall, while a “chainsaw” was used to create two windows, by cutting through one side of the wall.
The architectural history of the wall was not fully known and it was very difficult to foresee how a structure of such proportions, which had withstood the test of time, could be weakened to such an extent when the accretions securing it in place were removed.
The architect engaged by the developers had sensed the need to construct another wall to support that structure but reckoned that that could be done quickly before the old wall could give way.
The architect was aware of the risks and in fact, was monitoring the wall on a daily basis to check any movements in the structure.
But such a situation is dangerous because once a structure loses its intrinsic stability and starts to shift, it gives way suddenly “in a catastrophic manner as in fact happened [in this case],” reported the expert.
Works approved by PA and SCA
The project was green-lighted by the PA and there was no evidence indicating that those involved had somehow strayed from the conditions of the full development permit.
In correspondence with the PA, the SCH said that the proposed works did not “indicate any evident threat to Cultural Heritage and therefore the Superintendence finds no cultural heritage concern...”
No objection was made to the method statement for the works and there was no evidence that Bugeja had not followed that statement.
The proposal itself was to “demolish back part of the building”, and all works, including the opening of apertures in the wall, were done with the approval of the PA.
The SCH did not object.
The Superintendent, however, did not mention that when testifying, observed the court.
“Further comments are superfluous,” remarked the Magistrate.
Following the collapse, the PA issued an enforcement notice and a restoration method statement for the developers to restore the structure to its previous state.
Those works on the parapett wall and counterscarp of the Cittadella were carried out to the satisfaction of the SCH.
Mons Joe Vella Gauci, chairperson of the Cittadella Management Committee, testified that the wall “would never be the same,” and that the damage was “irreparable” since the collapse had swept away some one and half metres of archaeological findings uncovered during previous works at the Citadel.
“The mechanism meant to safeguard government property, in this case, had failed,” he added.
The committee had not been notified about the new apertures and did not contest the permit.
Other salient factors
Workers at the Cittadella who witnessed the collapse were not brought to testify by the prosecution before the court expert and neither in court.
They were subsequently identified by the defence and only then produced as witnesses.
It also emerged that the collapsed wall did not form part of the fortifications, with different architects pointing out that the two were built with different materials and techniques.
Plans produced by the defence also showed that the project did not in any way touch the fortifications.
In fact, after the incident, the SCH wrote to the police saying that the wall “had no evident value, certainly no value as a fortification”.
It was not even included in previous restoration works at the Cittadella, observed the court.
No evidence was presented to show that the contractor had breached at least one regulation and the court found no chain of causation linking his behaviour to the damages consequential to the collapse.
Planning documents were issued in Mark Agius’s name.
The prosecution failed to prove that the other two directors were his siblings, let alone that they were co-owners of the property and thus directly or indirectly involved in the project.
As for Mark Agius, the court found “an absolute lack of evidence” to prove the charges.
'The result was catastrophic'
“Trial holes” had been drilled in the backyard to check the foundations of adjacent properties and just minutes before the collapse, the architect was on site, instructing the contractor on erecting a supporting wall.
He had inspected the “robustly built” freestanding wall which showed no visible defects and had withstood the test of time.
A hairline crack was constantly monitored but there was no cause for concern.
However, it later emerged that the wall had two “cardinal defects”.
One corner was built on soil and it was not at all attached through morsalli to adjacent walls, Micallef testified, explaining how a basic rule of construction had been ignored.
“The result was catastrophic,” said Micallef.
When all was considered, the court did not find sufficient evidence to prove that the architect had failed to exercise proper diligence in overseeing the works.