Article highlighting illegal development is not libellous, court says

A court has dismissed a libel complaint by businessman Charles Foca, about an article relating to an illegal structure he had built on the Victoria Lines.

Foca claimed that the offending article, published in the Times of Malta, which did not mention him by name, depicted him as a violent person and had earned him the nickname “cowboy.”

The article, which was published in February 2013, told the story of a group of tourists who, while hiking along Victoria Lines, had been threatened for taking photos of an unsightly structure built on land which Foca had rented from the government.

The article reported the group leader as saying that part of the fortification near Rabat had been converted in to “a private terrace with concrete walls and a gate.” It added that MEPA had issued two enforcement notices and included photographs of the structure.

During the case, it emerged that the newspaper had received reports by another group of hikers who had told it that someone had built an illegal structure and was hosting barbeques on the property.

As a story about this issue had appeared on an unconnected news website some days before, a journalist from the newspaper had investigated further, getting statements from MEPA and other hikers, eventually writing the article in question.

Foca told the court that he had been in talks with the Lands Department about transferring the land to him, but after the publication of the article, the authorities and police had demolished the walls and illegal structures that he had built. All of this was reported in the news and had caused embarrassment to Foca.

Magistrate Francesco Depasquale however held that the article was not libellous. He highlighted the important role of investigative journalism, pointing out that Foca’s transgressions had gone unpunished for over seventeen years and this in spite of two enforcement notices.

The authority’s action had been prompted by the publicity, said the magistrate, adding that the actual damages caused by the article to Foca were not reputational, but the deprivation of his enjoyment of an illegal structure.