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James Debono
A precedent to waive thousands in outstanding rents owed to the state. This is how a rent of Lm110,000 owed to the public purse by Peter Fenech, whose derelict Jumbo Lido on the Tigné seafront lay in ruins for years, was forgiven.
And it’s not just the Mediterranean Conference Centre’s chairman and Louis Galea acolyte to have benefited from government’s magnanimity. Both political parties have had their outstanding rents written off by a Nationalist government.
More than a month since claiming on Radio 101 that there were precedents to the clemency shown for Fenech’s Lm109,965, Minister Tonio Borg has now confirmed there have been three other occasions in which the state waived off ground rent against the recession of the deed of emphytheusis.
The most recent case involved the Nationalist Party, who had Lm9,625 in rents due at Psaila Street waived off in January 2005.
In a clear example of political tit-for-tat, the government forgave Lm15,743 in rents owed by the Malta Labour Party for land at Ghajn Tuffieha back in May 2002.
The only other precedent involving a private company was set by the now dissolved Cottonera Properties Limited, when in March 2000 the government waived an an outstanding rent bill of Lm Lm 1,625,448, which included debt owed to BOV, on buildings and a chapel at Fort St Angelo at Vittoriosa, for the remission of the emphytheusis.
The Ministry claimed the fact that Peter Fenech’s VAB & Co Ltd had no other assets from where to pay its rent to the Lands Department justified the writing off of the outstanding rents.
Fenech is the director of 11 other companies apart from VAB.
The Ministry has yet to answer MaltaToday’s question on how much money the two parties owed the government before their rents were written off.
jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt |
