Strickland Foundation denies heir access to documents

The judge hearing the ongoing legal battle for the estate of the late Mabel Strickland has described the lack of collaboration between the parties as “scandalous and embarrassing”, adding that it was prolonging the proceedings.

The lawsuit was filed against the executors of Strickland’s estate – including the incumbent chairman of the Strickland Foundation and a director of Allied Newspapers, Joseph Ganado – by Robert Hornyold Strickland, a nephew of Times of Malta founder Mabel Strickland OBE, who is claiming that his late aunt’s will was changed in 1979 while he was living in Britain.

“I feel disoriented and disgusted at the way the case was being conducted,” Mr Justice Silvio Meli said in a sitting this morning. “I will not accept this lack of civility, even at the cost of the newspapers going all-out against me.”

Strickland and the foundation are at loggerheads over the interpretation of Mabel Strickland’s will, and whether she bequeathed the stately Villa Parisio in Lija to her nephew, or the trust that runs her newspaper.

Earlier in this morning’s sitting, Frank Bonello, a former manager at Lombard Bank and member of the council of the Strickland Foundation at the time of Mabel’s death, was cross-examined by lawyer Joseph A. Schembri.

Bonello confirmed that Robert Strickland was the sole heir of his aunt, Mabel Strickland, and that he had since become a Maltese citizen. He was asked who had the right to use and live in Villa Parisio, her villa in Lija. “Only him,” replied the witness.

The witness told the court that he had become aware of the content of Strickland’s will when he was made a member of the council of the Strickland Foundation in 1989, right after Strickland’s death. The will was part of the documents he had been handed to him, he said, and he had read both the handwritten and typewritten versions.

Strickland had never told him the reason for which she had set up the foundation, said Bonello. Asked if he was aware of any previous wills, he paused and then said that there may have been, but that he had never seen them. The registered address of the foundation is Strickland’s Lija villa, said the witness, adding that the foundation’s statute provided that the address could be changed to any other site. However, no such switch had been discussed.

Bonello said Hornyold Strickland had been declared a persona non grata in the early 1970s by the Labour government for “political reasons”. Strickland at the time had considered adopting him in order to ensure her estate is not taken by the government.

But the witness was evasive when asked about the fate of documentation relating to the Strickland Foundation.

“Robert has a section of the villa which I do not enter and am not familiar with. It houses several locked filing cabinets and a large amount of documentation.”

Asked what had happened to the filing cabinets, he replied that they “had to be somewhere on the property,” but later clarified that four cabinets were in the office of the Mabel Strickland Foundation and under the control of the same. The others were stored in a separate room under lock and key, also controlled by the Foundation.

“We did not accept Robert’s request to access the files because there are files which are strictly of interest to the foundation,” said the witness. He told the court that he recalled Hornyold Strickland asking him to distinguish between those files belonging to the foundation and those personally belonging to Mabel Strickland, but frankly admitted that as far as he knew, the foundation had consistently denied Hornyold Strickland access to all of them.

Schembri asked the witness what he made of the allegation that the foundation had made structural alteration to the villa, to which the heir had not consented.

“We had not informed him about the structural alterations. They were carried out because they were necessary, for example to combat rising damp and every two or three years the walls must be treated,” Bonello replied.

The lawyer retorted that this would generally be classified as maintenance and the question was about construction works. The witness replied that he could not recall any construction work being carried out.

The case continues in December.