[WATCH] Gafferenas were PN donors, but never got any favours - Fenech Adami

Beppe Fenech Adami on Gaffarena connections

Opposition deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami did not exclude that businessman Joe Gaffarena ever gave a donation to the Nationalist Party, however he insisted that the controversial entrepreneur “never got anything in return.”

“I do not exclude that he ever gave a donation, like many other do, but despite this he was not granted a petrol station permit under a PN government, which he then got under a Labour government,” Fenech Adami said in reference to a controversial permit granted by MEPA in 2014 for Gafferan's petrol pump station in Qormi.

Joe Gaffarena’s son, Marco, is already at the centre of a storm over a €1.65 million expropriation deal he benefitted from; and reportedly the Gaffarena family has financially supported both political parties over the years.

But the two major political parties have so far failed to reply to MaltaToday’s questions on whether they received donations from the Gaffarenas, before and after the 2013 general election.

Both parties are also at each other's throats over which one of them has grovelled the most to the Gaffarena family, which now emerge as having backed candidates from both the PN and Labour camps, especially in the sixth and seventh electoral districts.

READ MORE Gaffarena association keeps parties at each other's throats

In today's l-orizzont, former Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando confirmed that he was a regular invitee to dinners organised by Marco Gaffarena's family, at which Beppe Fenech Adami was present for at least two of these dinners. Gafferena himself has used his wife Josielle's Facebook page to hit out at Fenech Adami, who has since accused the Gaffarenas of bankrolling Labour, to remind of their previous 'political' friendship.

Addressing a press conference outside the justice ministry in Valletta, Fenech Adami and shadow justice minister Jason Azzopardi said government’s electoral promises of accountability, transparency and meritocracy had vanished in thin air.

“Instead we have Gaffarena’s government which is doing its utmost to protect the inner circles and destroy its adversaries,” Fenech Adami said.

Government’s ‘deafening silence’ on the findings of the Daniel Zammit inquiry expose that it is held hostage by an ever-growing web of corruption and scandals, the opposition said today.

On his part, Azzopardi said taht it was inexplicable how former acting police commissioner Ray Zammit could only get a warning for his business involvements with the Gaffarenas, without official permission from the permanent secretary. "[His son] Roderick Zammit, brother to Daniel, is still part of the police corps. Home affairs minister Carmelo Abela has remained silent and took no steps to have Roderick Zammit suspended immediately, leaving Ray Zammit as acting director of prisons.

"The question naturally follows: what do the Zammits know about Joseph Muscat and his government for them to have this status of untouchable?" Azzopardi asked. "Muscat is a hostage to a web of scandal and corruption that is only becoming wider day by day."