Manuel Delia sues Simon Mercieca over Schembri film studio bid allegations

Bloggers Manuel Delia and Simon Mercieca are at each other’s throats over the latter’s claim that Delia avoids writing about Keith Schembri due to a past incident involving a bid to take over the Mediterranean Film Studios in Kalkara.

Delia was alleged by Mercieca, a University of Malta academic, to have scuppered a potential deal to transfer the MFS to Keith Schembri, the disgraced former chief of staff to Joseph Muscat, back in 2007. Delia was then an aide to Nationalist investments minister Austin Gatt, under whose purview the nationally-owned studios and film investment policy fell.

It was this incident that had – according to Mercieca – led to Delia being economical in his writings about Schembri, who faces charges of money laundering.

Delia said he will be suing Simon Mercieca, after filing a right of reply to Mercieca’s blogpost. “Mercieca published that response but buried it under a new post saying that I had ‘confirmed’ what he had first alleged. I had done the opposite. I have no choice but to sue him,” Delia wrote in his blog.

Mercieca claims Delia and then film commissioner Luisa Bonello were pitched by Schembri to have the MFS transferred over to his consortium to run. He says Delia and Bonello instead tried pitching the MFS studio sale to an American media company.

Delia replied saying that as Gatt’s policy coordinator, the ministry had been cold-called by Schembri to take over the Mediterranean Film Studios concession to a private tenant. He said only a parliamentary resolution could be possible for the transfer of the MFS, without any call for tenders.

But Delia denied having offered the sale of MFS to another buyer, allegedly Ascent Media in the United States, for Lm10 million (€23 million), when Schembri’s consortium was offering Lm1.2 million for the studio concession.

“I delivered a presentation in their office at the invitation of a consortium of Italian film production companies who had set up a studio in Malta and were seeking to persuade Ascent Media to work with them in Malta. The Italian consortium asked me (and the Film Commissioner of the time) to deliver presentations on why Malta was an attractive location for their business activities.

“It should be clear that at no point did I or Luisa Bonello discuss with Ascent Media the acquisition or possible transfer in any form of the Mediterranean Film Studios.”

Delia also denied Mercieca’s claim that Carlo Tagliabue, who worked for the Italian media consortium, had travelled with this delegation to the United States.

The government later communicated to Schembri that their idea to take over the MFS could not be entertained any further: “the Mediterranean Film Studios had been granted by concession to someone else by a previous administration and there was a contract in place which was binding on the government.”

The MFS’s tenant had back then fallen behind on payable rent, leading to a government lawsuit for eviction.

A one-time PN candidate in 2013, Delia accused Mercieca of being an agent for Schembri as well as the family of Yorgen Fenech, who stands accused of masterminding the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. “I can only presume he will be speaking with the Fenechs about Arriva and together with them weave another tower of fabrications shorn up by entirely true details. I expect he’ll report that I held a constituency event in the Dolmen Hotel when I was an election candidate in 2013 and I got the venue lent to my campaign for free. Or he’ll report that a cousin of Yorgen Fenech gave me a few hundred euro towards the cost of my election campaign.”

Mercieca’s blog hosts conservative right-wing commentators and anti-vax opinions, and has faced lawsuits over the content that it has published.

In 2021, lawyer Arthur Azzopardi sued Mercieca for claiming that he and Darren Debono were indicated as masterminding the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Mercieca has also claimed that Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna is a member of Opus Dei, an allegation which the Church has officially denied.

The American traveller Andrea Prudente denied a termination for her unviable pregnancy in Malta, also filed a lawsuit for defamation against Mercieca.

On his part, Mercieca is suing writer and publisher Mark Camilleri for libel after the latter accused him of of being paid by Yorgen Fenech’s mother Patricia. “Simon Mercieca is a loser working for the mafia and I don’t like giving him attention to increase his popularity, but people ought to know who he is and why he is acting this way,” wrote Camilleri.

“And the reason why I mention him is because he is dangerous as just another servant of an organised criminal group. The public ought to know who is siding with whom.”