Roderick Galdes has to go

Roderick Galdes certainly bagged a bargain when in 2021 he reserved the price of €140,000 for an 80sq.m duplex penthouse with garage, airspace and rooftop jacuzzi. 

The penthouse forms part of the Ħal Gelmus project in Rabat, Gozo. This is not a simple block of flats. It is a development spread over 6,500sq.m and comprises 167 residences, garages, commercial outlets and a landscaped communal swimming pool. The company developing Ħal Gelmus is owned by developers Joseph Portelli, Mark Agius and Daniel Refalo. 

Galdes entered into a promise of sale agreement on his penthouse in 2024, three years after booking the price, and eventually bought the property for €140,000 in January 2025 when he signed the contract. 

Any right-thinking individual would find the terms Galdes managed to secure in 2021 unbelievable. While property prices in Gozo are markedly cheaper than Malta, buying a penthouse with garage and airspace in a complex like Ħal Gelmus will definitely set any normal individual back by thousands of euros more than what Galdes paid. 

Suffice to say that a recent KPMG study commissioned by the Malta Development Association found that the average asking price for a penthouse in 2025—the year Galdes finalised the contract—is €555,000 with a median price tag of €413,000. The study found that apartment prices have been increasing year-on-year at an average rate of 14%. 

This marked difference between what Galdes paid and the market value of a property like his is enough to raise eyebrows. 

Any right-thinking individual is justified to conclude that Galdes managed to secure the favourable price because he is a minister. Galdes has refuted any suggestion of impropriety, insisting he benefitted from the same terms afforded to other clients of the company that sold him the penthouse. 

But there is a crucial difference between ‘other clients’ and Galdes—the latter is an elected official and minister, whose duties extend beyond what is simply legal or not. 

As minister, Galdes is responsible for a portfolio that includes social and affordable housing. This encompasses the Housing Authority. 

In the period between the promise of sale agreement that Galdes signed early in 2024 and the contract signed in January this year, the developers from whom he bought the bargain penthouse, leased 104 properties to the Housing Authority as part of a social housing scheme. The scheme involves the authority renting out properties from the private sector for a 10-year period, which it then sublets to social housing applicants. 

Galdes has brushed off this blatant conflict of interest too casually by insisting he was unaware that the developers from whom he bought had participated in this scheme. We find this hard to believe. But Galdes’s statement also implies that he did not declare this conflict to the Cabinet Secretary or the prime minister when buying the penthouse earlier this year. 

But Galdes did not even declare the private agreement and the €5,000 deposit he paid to secure the bargain property in the last-available declaration of assets that were made public in 2021 and 2022. 

To make matters worse, serious accusations were levelled towards Galdes recently by Marlene Mizzi, Malta’s non-resident ambassador to Sweden and Norway, a former Labour MEP and former chair of government-majority company Malita Investments. 

Mizzi accused Galdes of “hobnobbing” with contractors and trying to interfere with the work of Malita during the time she chaired the company. She also claimed that she was removed in 2024 from the company because she stood up to Galdes. The minister and the company have denied the accusations. 

Malita Investments has since 2017 served as a finance and property management vehicle for the development of social housing units across Malta. In July 2023, Malita Investments was transferred to Galdes’s portfolio. Mizzi’s accusations, which so far have not been challenged in court, clearly suggest that Galdes was up, close and personal with contractors while trying to interfere in Malita’s operations that included the building of housing units worth millions of euros. 

Any right-thinking individual could reach the conclusion that Galdes is not being transparent enough about his private dealings with developers. This is not a private matter but a very public one with potentially serious implications. 

It is already embarrassing enough for government to have the minister for affordable housing buying a penthouse at a price ordinary people can only dream of, let alone being accused of cosying up with contractors. 

Within this context, the penthouse saga is not just a question of conflict of interest but also one of bad judgement, which makes Galdes unfit for purpose. This is why he should step down from minister and if not, the responsibility falls on the prime minister to remove him. 

So far, Robert Abela has taken Galdes’s side, even defending the ridiculous penthouse price in the process, which is why we are not holding our breath. 

Meanwhile, a baffled electorate is asking where their children could find apartments at the price paid by Galdes. Unfortunately, that is the one question for which no reply exists. 

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