‘Police investigation into Café Premier did not follow trail of €210,000 fee’

Shadow home affairs minister Jason Azzopardi has suggested that the Maltese police did not do enough to investigate an alleged €210,000 commission that was factored into a €4.2 million compensation for the rescission of the Café Premier lease.

The €210,000 is believed to have been constituted as a fee by a shareholder in Cities Entertainment Ltd, Mario Camillleri, for having secured the agreement with government consultant John Sciberras to have the Lands Department buy back the 65-year lease on the government property.

Azzopardi, who as former minister for lands had called on Cities Entertainment to pay their rental arrears, questioned whether a police investigation on alleged commissions had been thorough enough.

“Do we know whether the police entered into detail as to the timeline of the €210,000, who issued this payment, who received it, and whether they moved to another recipient?” Azzopardi said on Radio 101.

“For the sake of argument… let’s assume that a third person, a government official or a consultant, had his hand in the soup. Wouldn’t this be a case of bad governance?”

The Opposition has asked the Auditor General to investigate the workings of the €4.2 million compensation paid to Cities Entertainment for the rescission of the 65-year lease, ostensibly to vacate the premises underlying the National Library in Valletta. The PN said it wants to learn whether the compensation was ethical, in line with government procurement rules, whether this was discriminatory towards similar businesses and whether other intermediaries were involved in the deal.

“Wouldn’t any businessman facing eviction from their government owned premises be justified in demanding the same treatment,” Azzopardi asked.

“It’s scandalous that a director of Cities Entertainment told the police that another director had claimed €210,000 in the form of a commission,” he said.

According to a police investigation into allegations of commissions, shareholder-director Neville Curmi alleged that his partner Mario Camilleri claimed the money after reaching the deal with the former Lands Department director John Sciberras. On his part, Camilleri denied to police that this was a commission, but said that the debt had been constituted due to monies he had poured into the running of the ailing business.

“We heard so much talk from Labour about its pledges for good governance, transparency and value for money… the message it sends out to the business community is that it is better off not paying its dues to the state, so that the government can bail it out when they go bankrupt,” Azzopardi said.

The MP also disputed government’s claim that it took the opportunity to evict Café Premier’s owners so that the catering establishment would not pose any danger to the rare documents housed in the overlying Biblioteca.

“They could have chosen to proceed with the court case over the outstanding rental arrears, and demand the rescission of the lease to recoup the property. This is what the Nationalist government did to recoup the Rinella film studios from its current operators after they defaulted on their rental payments.”