On November 9, the Court of Appeal annulled the concession which the government, through the Lands Authority, had granted FKNK, the Federation for Hunting and Conservation, to manage the sites at Aħrax and Miżieb.
The court found that the government tried to circumvent several legal safeguards when awarding this concession. We now feel it is time to reveal all that was uncovered during the course of this lawsuit.
Basis for the concession
The process for the award of the concession started when FKNK requested the Lands Authority to be allowed to manage the two sites in August 2014.
This was requested on the basis of a photocopy of a press release dated 1986, which bears FKNK’s letterhead. FKNK claims the press release is signed by former prime minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, in which he “confirms his approval” for Miżieb to be designated as a hunting reserve. The letter also mentions that the same applies for a project “in the limits of Mellieħa”.
In its submission, FKNK also provided another photocopy of a press release issued by its Mellieħa branch in October 1989, which it claims contains a handwritten note by acting prime minister Guido de Marco granting the title of possession to FKNK on the same lands.
These two documents are in photocopy form, as FKNK confirmed that the originals no longer exist. In addition, the second press statement does not appear to bear de Marco’s signature. No formal supporting documentation exists, not even a site plan specifying the extent of the two sites.
Furthermore, in September 2017, a separate court concluded that these documents did not give FKNK a legal claim over the site. This was confirmed by a reply to an FOI request by Arnold Cassola dated May 2020, where the authority confirmed that “to date no agreement, concession, lease, emphyteusis, title of ownership, encroachment, possession, or mere tolerance management and or services and or consultancy agreement has been entered into between the GPD and or Lands Authority and the FKNK”.
Incredibly, during the Aħrax and Miżieb court case, the Lands Authority stated that the 1986 file referring to the lands in question had been lost and that a new file had been started in 2014, when FKNK made the request to manage the lands. The only documentation exhibited from this file were the same documents provided by FKNK in their letter.
How the concession was negotiated
FKNK’s request seems to have been noticed in May 2017, when the then parliamentary secretary for planning, Deborah Schembri issued a ministerial directive to the Lands Authority ‘recommending’ that the authority concede these lands to FKNK. The issue seems to have died down until Lands CEO James Piscopo kick-started the process again in April 2019.
Shortly afterwards, the document which would become the management agreement was drafted by the Lands contract division. This was described as a template with a number of blanks, which was then sent to Piscopo. No site plan was in possession of the contract division at this drafting stage.
A series of meetings was then held in the boardroom of the ministry occupied by the then parliamentary secretary for lands, Chris Agius, which included himself, Piscopo and FKNK representatives Lino Farrugia and Joseph Perici Calascione. None of the meetings were minuted and everything was done verbally. No related documents were found to exist, either in the archives of the ministry for transport led by Ian Borg or in the underlying parliamentary secretariat of Agius.
None of the meetings were minuted and everything was done verbally- Ingram Bondin
During these discussions, FKNK provided its own site plans and the government simply included the specified areas in Aħrax and Miżieb in the annulled concession. This area included Qammiegħ, which had never been mentioned before in the Mifsud Bonnici and de Marco documents.
The ERA’s MoU
In addition, according to Piscopo, FKNK tried to include Selmun as well in the concession but this was described as a sticking point and not green-lighted.
During these meetings, a number of decisions were also taken to modify the contract prepared by Lands. Piscopo received ‘political direction’ to set the fee to be paid every year for the two sites to the nominal amount of €400. It was confirmed that no standard procedure was used to determine this amount.
In addition, Ivan Meli, private secretary to Agius and responsible for the amendments, stated that this €400 was a further reduction from the initial amount of about €1,000. For comparison’s sake, FKNK claimed that it has 10,000 members who pay a fee of about €11 per year, leading to at least an annual revenue of €110,000 for the association.
During the negotiations there was also another ‘political direction’ to include a clause indicating that the ministry responsible for hunting, led by Clint Camilleri, would engage four conservation officers to patrol the site.
The final version of the contract was approved by the board of governors of the Lands Authority in June 2020. It was then shelved until October 2020, when it was announced at the now infamous and hastily organised signing ceremony, at which the press were not invited.
It is clear that no feedback was taken on board when the Spazji Miftuħa coalition met with the prime minister at the end of May 2020 because the final contract must have already been at the board of governors by that date.
In addition to the concession, the Environment and Resources Authority and the ministry for the environment also signed an MOU specifying some general parameters for the management of the site. It is clear that the MOU was an afterthought, as ERA did not participate at all in the process of drafting the concession.
No site inspection took place by ERA before signing this MOU and no process was followed to assess the ability of FKNK to manage the site.
This was despite Miżieb and Aħrax having been issued a large number of enforcement notices, many of which were related to hunting. At least one of the notices refers to dumping and identifies FKNK as the contravenor.
This is not to mention the fact that, in June 2019, 25 per cent of Miżieb was burnt to a cinder due to inappropriate afforestation practices carried out by the supposed managers of the site.
Furthermore, the work plans specified in the MOU were still at a discussion stage a year later, in October 2021, according to then ERA CEO Michelle Piccinino.
Finally, the footpaths which were supposed to be left open to the public were not specified when the MOU was signed. When, in May 2021, MP Joseph Ellis asked the minister responsible for lands, Silvio Schembri, to specify these footpaths in a PQ, the minister could not identify them and never did.
We wish to bring these facts to public light to illustrate the failure of governance at all levels which has taken place during the award of this concession.
Are we to expect that this process will be repeated again in the same manner in the near future, when issues of public accessibility to open spaces have now risen to the forefront?
Ingram Bondin is president of the Ramblers’ Association of Malta.