Beppe Fenech Adami awarded €3,000 in damages over Gharghur villa report

PN deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami has won €3,000 in damages for defamatory libel from One News over a TV bulletin about his property in Gharghur.

The PN deputy leader had denied suggestions that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi accorded him any special treatment by allowing his Gharghur home to extend beyond the two-storey limit, just days after telling the then-Malta Environment and Planning Authority to limit heights on properties on the perimeter of the development zone.

Labour media One News had broadcast the contents of a letter from Gonzi in October 2008, in which he instructed MEPA chairman Austin Walker not to allow the addition of storeys on homes located on the periphery of the development zone, that had been controversially extended in 2006.

Fenech Adami’s home, located in a ‘green area’ in Gharghur which he had bought way back in 1988, was one of many properties to be included in the rationalisation of the development zones in 2006.

Fenech Adami had claimed that a letter by former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi to MEPA chairman Austin Walker, sent three days after turning down the height extension on 10 October 2008, shows other applicants benefited from the same treatment. The two letters were produced by One News as evidence of the policy decision by Gonzi, and the ministerial instruction to approve three planning control applications made three days later.

In his letter, Gonzi had told Walker that the height extension would affect those properties recently added to the development zone’s periphery. “In these sites that border onto rural areas, government would like to see a planning policy that prohibits an extension of building heights any more than is allowed,” Gonzi told Walker in his letter.

 But on 13 October 2008, Gonzi informed the MEPA board secretary that he would approve three individual planning control applications, one of which affected the development of Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami’s villa. 

In his judgement on the matter, magistrate Francesco Depasquale noted that the plaintiff, as a politician was subject to greater scrutiny than private citizens and that journalists had a right to report in its role as public watchdog but on the other hand, the journalist must be in a position to substantiate and defend in court the allegations he makes.

One News editor Aleander Balzan never appeared in court to defend his allegation or conclusions, despite being reported as saying that he looked forward to present the evidence in court and accusing the PN of trying to muzzle the reports.

Fenech Adami had produced documents and testimony showing that the property had been developed according to law before he bought it in 1994, that the permits had been issued when the Labour party had been in government. In addition, a permit for a swimming pool had been applied for during that period and had been issued shortly after the Labour government's end of term. The plaintiff had also proved that the third storey he had built in line with the Planning Authority’s policies in force at the time. His garden is still in an ODZ area and has not been developed, noted the court.



Magistrate Depasquale concluded that, as the defendant had not presented evidence to sustain his allegations and in view of the evidence provided by the plaintiff that the broadcast on One TV on 15 and 16 March 2016 were solely intended to slander the plaintiff. The court therefore condemned Balzan, as editor of One TV, to pay €3,000 in damages to Fenech Adami.