There aren’t many photos, in the vast repository of horrors known as the internet, of developer Anton Camilleri tal-Franċiz.

Unlike some of his flashier ‘colleagues’, Camilleri is an established name who prefers to do his business away from cameras. Known as a big, particularly seasoned slab of cheese in the industry and a familiar face to many a politician, his burly presence on the Malta Developers’ Association’s board of directors has often slipped under the radar, perhaps the biggest success in its campaign against “cowboys”.

In fact, it was unusual to see him grimacing along MDA president Michael Stivala during a PR schmooze where the association professed its sudden love for geology, an implicit admission that the lobby has hit rock bottom.

Camilleri prefers to operate in the way of a giant killer whale, surfacing occasionally to look for its next prize before disappearing again in an abyss made of concrete, concessions and connections. After the election, however, he’s loosened his waistline and did more than just scouting the next kill: the spate of planning and zoning applications filed through his various companies and architects are only the next steps of his carefully-planned long-term ‘investments’.

Anton Camilleri, known as Tal-Franċiż. Photo: MDA

It’s hard to decipher where he’ll attack next, as his offensive has seen the shadow of his horrible, soulless, brutish constructions threaten various areas such as Fgura, Marsascala and Santa Luċija, with the lights rigorously out.

Take Marsascala, for example. In 2018, he applied to zone a tract of rural land in Żonqor for development; the area was part of George Pullicino’s rationalisation policy in the 2006 local plans. The zoning was naturally approved by the Planning Authority, which will effortlessly bless the eyesore proposed by GAP projects last May: 135 apartments, 180 garages, five storeys over 5,000sqm.

Similarly, in Fgura the developer is applying to rezone 23,000sqm of undeveloped land: he aims to create a maze of flats and roads in the only green lung left in town, also a victim of rationalisation.

In both cases, he is represented by architect Colin Zammit of the Maniera Group, who had once proposed to build all schools in ODZ areas under the pretence of reducing traffic to town centres. A few months later, he appeared in the list of top dogs for ODZ planning permits.

The duo has now filed a planning control application for a “pedestrian street” in an otherwise unused plot of land in Ħamrun (PC/00035/22) and the bets are open as to how many apartments will result out of this latest piece of creativity in planning.

His choice of high-profile architects is equally interesting. Camilleri’s projects invariably come with their trademark disproportionate massing and gut-wrenching ugliness but, there again, some periti make better lobbyists.

In 2020, Camilleri obtained a zoning permit to develop another green space in Santa Luċija, in an area scheduled for a maximum of three storeys. Strikingly, there were no representations to the application, filed in 2018, which was approved for five storeys in breach of the 2015 Development Control Design Policy, in an area where the PA had already refused an application of that size.

Unlike some of his flashier ‘colleagues’, Camilleri is an established name who prefers to do his business away from cameras- Wayne Flask

This time, he is being represented by Labour Party president Daniel Jose Micallef, a wise step in a series of stealthy tip-tops to plonk 48 flats in a staunch Labour enclave. Here, too, Camilleri happens to eye an open space which can be rezoned.

Micallef and Zammit will likely defend their client by saying there’s nothing illegal in all this; after all, land speculation has been aided and abetted by the introduction of new laws or by their hushed violation.

Micallef is the latest smoke salesman but it’s nothing to do with dealing cannabis. He is the man responsible for Labour’s electoral programme and its pledge for more urban open spaces; away from the spotlights, he’s greasing the wheels for a speculator who wants them for his profit. The destruction of a town and his own constituents’ quality of life pays him lunch and possibly earns him an ally for bigger things in politics. Yet, only architects and few others are privy to the secret goings on in land ownership.

Right before the election, the Lands Authority issued a tender for the sale of a public alleyway right next to Villa Rosa, where Camilleri is yet to erect his biggest monster. He was the only bidder for this alley, which he bought for a ridiculous €133,800; hardly enough to buy one of his apartments, let alone the site of a 5.5m tunnel.

Stivala was too busy ducking questions about construction deaths to complain of the unlevelled playing fields, as the MDA had done after the db and Corinthia deals. They won’t shoot their own rider, especially because it is clear that the Villa Rosa scandal should be investigated; by the NAO, if not the police.

While questions on the prices at which Camilleri is buying up land are justified, the creation of new roads, often through non-expropriated land, requires an investigation of its own.

In Dingli, last year, the standoff between Moviment Graffitti activists and Infrastructure Malta personnel was accompanied by numerous reports from residents about a curious promise of sale agreement involving a farmhouse and ODZ land, just a few hundred metres from the site under contention.

Their concerns are confirmed: the deal, signed in 2019, has a five-year expiry period and is subject to “the construction of a new road”. This will, alone or in conjunction with other tweaks to the local plan, turn a whole ODZ area into an area for development. Such ‘tweaks’, for example, may include the building of sports facilities, or, say, a school – which can be built in ODZ.

I find it hard to play the advocate for Camilleri, whose deals, at the very least, somehow place him at the right place, at the right time, and always at the right cut-price.

But silence is not an option: for residents as for politicians, like Lands Minister Silvio Schembri, who now have a lot to answer for.