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Matthew Vella
Two shareholders in Eliza Company Ltd, the company embroiled in a contentious struggle with local farmers at Bahrija, are none other than former METCO chairman Norman Zammit and Generoso Sammut, also known as Jimmy.
The two men are accused of having stolen paintings, furniture and other items from Villa Fiorentina in Lord Strickland Street in Attard back in September 1999, to the detriment of the heirs of the late Joseph and Lilian Grungo.
They are also charged with handling stolen property, when police found 15 paintings stolen from the villa locked up in a Qormi factory after they were tipped off that a former METCO chairman and a man from Siggiewi were trying to sell them.
Jimmy Sammut is also accused of slightly injuring Inspector Angelo Caruana and attacking, resisting, insulting, threatening and disobeying the police officers who apprehended him. He is also accused of committing a crime during the operative term of a suspended jail term and relapsing.
The two men were granted bail by Magistrate Carol Peralta.
Norman Zammit was appointed chairman of METCO by former Prime Minister Alfred Sant in 1996.
The two men, along with shareholders Emanuel, Joseph and Carmel Baldacchino, Ninu ‘il-Hasana’ Cuschieri and George Cuschieri, and Anthony Galea, are at the heart of a fierce land tussle after farmers in Bahrija reported that company directors had beat them up, in a bid to rid them off the land.
Last week, MaltaToday revealed how Eliza Company was marketing the sale of one and a half million square metres of land in the north-west of Malta, claiming on its website that permits are available for the development of fish farms, Disneyland-styled theme parks, golf courses of international standards and a five-star hotel.
The permits however do not actually exist, confirmed to this paper by director-shareholder Emanuel Baldacchino. Baldacchino defended his intention to sell the land to developers after his company had invested a lot of money to buy the land off Salvatore Consoli-Palermo-Navarra, the 9th Count of Bahria, who lives in Sicily.
The estates were purchased by the Navarra family in 1599, and the title is inheritable by anyone who owns the Bahria estates.
Bahrija Farmers suffered injuries at the hands of the company director-shareholders after a brawl on May 9, when architect Joseph Ellul Vincenti, appointed by a court to draft fresh plans of the area, was on site with the farmers and Eliza Company shareholders when a series of verbal exchanges turned into a fight.
In comments to this newspaper last week, farmer Joseph Portelli, said Leli Baldacchino had kicked one of the farmers, and his brother Joseph punched him in the eye.
The 1,500-tumolo area, known as il-Qortin and overlooking the bay at Fomm ir-Rih, is a green area and development there is prohibited.
The farmers are claiming that Eliza’s shareholders are trying to bully them out of the land, despite having had the land leased to them (qbiela) for the past 300 years prior to the purchase of the land in 1997. The farmers are being sued by Eliza directors to move out of the land.
In September 2004, Eliza Company attempted to freeze the farmers’ bank accounts by asking for a garnishee order. They later successfully managed to get a warrant of prohibitory injunction preventing the farmers from walking on the land.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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