The Planning Authority Board has just voted to sanction a massive 2,000-square-metre illegally constructed basement car park on an ODZ site lying just outside the buffer zone of San Pawl Milqi chapel and catacombs.
To add insult to injury, that car park won’t be for regular vehicles. It’s for heavy vehicles – trucks, bulldozers, trenching and digging equipment. Labour St Paul’s Bay mayor Alfred Grima called the approval “an obscenity which sends a message that one can do whatever one likes, that one can build now and sanction later”.
Of course, it’s not everyone who can do whatever they like. It’s only those closest to Labour. And nobody is closer to Labour than the company behind those illegal developments – Bonnici Brothers.
Prime Minister Robert Abela was the company’s lawyer before taking office. In 2016, just one year before Abela was elected an MP, he entered into a business deal with Gilbert Bonnici, Bonnici Brothers’ director and shareholder.
Abela and his wife paid €180,000 for a half-share of a terraced house in Giovanni Curmi Street, Iklin. Bonnici was one of their partners. Abela provided legal services to the Planning Authority at the time. Within six months, the PA issued a permit for the Iklin property to be demolished and developed into six apartments, garages and penthouses. By June 2019, all were sold in shell form, netting over €1 million.
Since then, Bonnici Brothers have continued to benefit handsomely from multi-million-euro government contracts and direct orders. In November 2020, during Abela’s first year in office, the Water Services Corporation awarded Bonnici Brothers a €3.4 million contract for “construction of a storage warehouse facility in an environmentally friendly manner”.
Moviment Graffitti revealed that, between 2020 and 2021, the company received €7.7 million in direct orders from Infrastructure Malta. That was on top of another €6 million direct orders for works at the Ta’ Kandja shooting range.
In September 2020, Abela personally inaugurated a €2 million investment at a quarry owned by Bonnici Brothers. Some of those millions came from EU funds channelled to Bonnici Brothers by Malta Enterprise. How much, nobody knows, because the sum was kept secret.
Despite the manifest conflict of interest, Abela lauded Bonnici Brothers. “The government’s confidence in investors who are not afraid of challenges, such as the Bonnici Brothers Group, has resulted in the creation of more new jobs,” Abela declared. He insisted that his government will continue to support enterprises such as the Bonnici Brothers “to continue to improve the quality of life of Maltese and Gozitans”.
Try telling that to the residents around their illegal Burmarrad developments. Try convincing those residents that heavy vehicles trundling through their neighbourhood will improve their quality of life. Give them one reason why Triq is-Sardin has remained closed for years despite its opening being a condition of another permit issued in 2017 sanctioning another illegality – a storage facility.
That specific development had been turned down three times, twice in 2004 and again in 2008, because of its “negative impact on the scenic value of the area”. But in 2017, just one year after Abela and his wife joined Bonnici on that Iklin money-making project, Bonnici Brothers’ illegalities were sanctioned – defying a case officer report calling for an outright refusal.
Of course, nobody was surprised when Bonnici Brothers were awarded the contract for waste-to-energy plant in Magħtab- Kevin Cassar
In November 2022, another case officer recommended the most recent Bonnici Brothers application for refusal because of “an intensification of ODZ development on the site”. So, the Planning Authority got another case officer ‒ and he overturned the previous officer’s report and recommended approval. His excuse – “the application involves no additional take-up of ODZ land”.
Even PA Board chairman Emanuel Camilleri admitted “feeling entirely uncomfortable with issuing the permit”. But he still approved it. His justification was that development had already ruined the area anyway. No wonder even Labour’s mayor called the approval “an obscenity”.
But sanctioning Bonnici Brothers’ gross illegalities isn’t Labour’s worst obscenity. That title goes to the recent award of a €600 million contract to Bonnici Brothers for a waste-to-energy plant in Magħtab.
During the bidding process for the lucrative contract, the Department of Contracts published confidential financial information, including non-binding financial offers, made by bidders, ensuring there could be no fair competition. That was a serious breach of public procurement rules. Participating consortia discovered crucial information about their competitors’ bids.
Despite the ‘blunder’ and strong advice that the whole process should be scrapped and started from scratch, Abela reportedly took a personal interest and gave informal instructions simply to proceed.
Of course, nobody was surprised when Bonnici Brothers were awarded that contract. But two other bidding major consortia, Hitachi-Zosen and FCC Medioambiente, were shocked. They are both mounting an appeal. Both claim that Bonnici Brothers’ €600 million bid is impossibly low. For that money it is just not possible to meet the specifications laid out in the contract. Bonnici Brothers’ proposed annual fixed cost of just €8 million and a capital cost of €285 million is far too low to be remotely realistic.
The appealing companies found it “inconceivable” that all three bids were given full marks for almost all of the technical criteria set out in the tender. They complained about “the extremely superficial manner” in which the assessment was carried out.
Bonnici Brothers have absolutely no experience in this sort of plant. They do demolitions, excavations, construction but not waste-to-energy plants. So, to get that €600 million contract they conveniently linked up with French company Paprec.
The CEO of Paprec, Jean Luc Petithuguenin, was placed in French police custody and indicted for “corruption, favouritism, unlawful agreement and
illegal taking of interests”. He was charged with corruption in the award of a public contract for a €36 million waste-sorting facility. The company has debts totalling €1.129 billion and has a BB-S&P rating.
The judge has forbidden Petithuguenin from managing Paprec and his son, Sebastian has taken over.
Should the CEO be found guilty, Paprec could lose the confidence of its shareholders, making its access to capital more difficult.
Expect another Vitals, thanks to Abela.