Comino story: how big business got its share of paradise

In 1960, two years after the revocation of Maltese self-government and four years before independence, the colonial authorities leased the tiny island of Comino – in its entirety – to the company Comino Development Ltd, owned by the British property millionaire and Soho landlord John Gaul for 150 years. The price was a measly £100 annual rent. It had previously been used by to grow fruit and vegetables over 162 hectares land by the Zammit Cutajar family’s Comino Farming Company.

The original deed, applicable till 2110, obliged Gaul to develop a 200-room hotel and even a restaurant on Cominotto by March 1963. When the company was in default of the deadline, the Borg Olivier government took the opportunity to “improve the government’s position” by restricting the extent of the foreshore originally granted to the company and removing the restaurant on Cominotto. In 1963 a new deal was signed, reducing the area to that presently occupied by the Comino Hotel at San Niklaw Bay and the bungalows at Santa Marija Bay. The ground rent was to be revised every 33 years according to the rate of inflation.

Eventually, the BICAL bank founder Cecil Pace was contracted to run the hotel in Gaul’s absence. By the time of the 1972 run on the bank, Pace had been arrested for banking fraud, and the company had defaulted  on its government rent. A deed signed in 1975 further reduced the areas allocated to Gaul, while retaining the same ground rent and conditions. The hotel was later contracted to the Mizzi group.

In the meantime, John Gaul himself was embroiled in legal troubles of his own, after his ex-wife Barbara was shot in 1976 in Patcham, near Brighton, outside a pub. Gaul, a Soho property owner with ties to the Maltese Syndicate, went on the run with his new wife – police arrested two brothers, Roy and Keith Edgeler, who were allegedly brought into the plot via a middleman, Charles Kray, brother to the notorious twins. The Edgelers confessed to the shooting, but defiantly refused to name the man who had hired them for the hit. Gaul was questioned, but released for lack of evidence, and three days after flew to Italy and then Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

John Gaul in self-imposed exile to Malta

In April 1978, Gaul came to Malta where his luxury yacht Lotus Eater was moored. A British request to extradite Gaul was turned down by the Maltese Courts in 1981. Gaul was allowed back in the UK to receive medical treatment in 1984 after the police concluded that there was insufficient evidence linking him to the murder.

Upon the election of a Nationalist government in 1987 the deed was revised again when in 1989, an additional 5,139sq.m of “building land” was added to the concession and earmarked for the expansion of the holiday centre. Two other plots measuring 73,000sq.m were also handed to the company but were earmarked as ‘parkland’ where no new development was allowed.  The parkland was offered to the company for 2 cents per square metre, while the “building land” was offered for 50 cents per square metre. The total ground rent due was established at Lm4,240 – a nominal €11,768 paid annually to the government.

The deed hinted at more extensive development by stating that construction may be allowed on the ‘parkland’ on condition that the ground rent paid is raised to that paid for the building area.   

In 1998, Kemmuna Limited filed a planning application for an extension of the hotel but its processing was suspended by the planning authority in 2003 when the architect failed to submit the required documents within the legal time-frame.

Left to right: George Fenech, Joe Gasan and Melo Hili

From Mizzi to Gasan and Tumas

In a sign of renewed interest by developers, in 2007 the business magnates Joseph Gasan and George Fenech bought a share in Kemmuna Ltd, after acquiring Ropes Services Ltd, an offshore company registered in the Isle of Man.

Ropes Services then proceeded to acquire 551,470 ordinary shares in Kemmuna Limited, with the remaining 698,530 belonging to Mizzi Associated Enterprises, then owned by property magnate Albert Mizzi.

In the meantime, another Kemmuna shareholder – Lombard Bank – also sold its shares, to Hili Investments Ltd, which immediately sold their shares to Ropes Services.

This was followed by an increase of the company’s authorised share capital, which now amounted to €3.4 million. Lombard Bank director Joseph Said and Albert Mizzi’s son Alec gave up their directorship in Kemmuna, to be replaced by Gasan and Fenech.

Exit Tumas and Gasan, Enter Hili

But in 2019 Hili Ventures launched an €80 million bond issue, with the unsecured bonds directed to the acquisition of the Comino Hotel. The acquisition of the hotel and bungalows was made with a view to developing the site into a mixed-use hospitality project, including a luxury hotel and upmarket serviced bungalows.

Hili Ventures’ property valuation report stated that in an initial meeting with the Planning Authority it was outlined that current policy would permit the redevelopment of the hotel and bungalows, providing that the proposed total gross floor area remains unchanged. The local plan for Comino accords the island the status of Special Area of Conservation and nature reserve, and only allows developers to “upgrade” the existing tourist complex and hotel if it is “compatible with the sensitivity of the surrounding context”.

Subsequently an application was presented to increase the number of bungalows from the current 13 to 21, increasing the land take-up at Santa Marija beach by more than 3,697sq.m.  The removal of tennis courts from the hotel area facing San Niklaw beach will reduce the footprint of the hotel by 7,000sq.m.

An Environment Impact Assessment presented in 2021 by consultants commissioned by Hili Ventures had concluded that the development will generate a “large” change in what is a highly sensitive landscape. The village will overlook Santa Marija Bay, creating a sense of a “greater, denser, built-up area” as a change from a tourist complex to private and individually-owned residences will change both the physical and social landscape.

The EIA also warned that the luxury homes will introduce “a group of permanent residences to an island that is essentially uninhabited and part of the Maltese islands’ rural heritage and environment.”

The EIA described the new hotel replacing the present structure will be a “more subtle building” that will blend in better with the environment. But the number of bungalows will increase and appear closer together, “increasing the density of the built-up part of this area”, the EIA warned.

Subsequently in the face of public outrage, the number of bungalows was reduced from 21 to 19 reducing the extra land take up of the bungalows to around 2,000sq.m. An outhouse and concierge pavilion and one of the two proposed piers in Santa Marija Bay were also removed.  Facing criticism that the new bungalows would result in land speculation, Hili Ventures now insists that the new bungalows on Comino will not be for sale but managed by the hotel operator as hotel suites.