Whip’s dad trapped birds on Gaffarena’s land

Nationalist whip David Agius has confirmed with MaltaToday that his father, a bird trapper, had accepted land for a trapping site in fields at Tas-Salib, limits of Rabat, from petrol station and property owner Joe Gaffarena.

Confirming once again the ties that Gaffarena has had with many members of the political class, Agius told this newspaper he had been unaware that his father had accepted the parcel of land. “I do not know what my father has done or is doing,” he said.

Asked if he knew property entrepreneur Joe Gaffarena, Agius claimed that he never met him or talked to him but had probably seen him during a village feast.

He later confirmed that his father had indeed accepted a piece of land to use for trapping songbirds. “It must have been between 2011 and 2012, and my father had offered to pay for the land but Gaffarena had refused to take any money. My father was asked to return it because Joe Gaffarena had informed him that he needed the land.”

After 2008, trapping songbirds was banned but it was reintroduced last year by the present administration.

Agius could not say why his father carried out bird trapping when this was banned.

The trapping site in question lies in a parcel of land which, according to the MEPA map server, was the subject of a planning application by Gaffarena’s son Johann for the construction of a vineyard and a winery. The permission was granted in 2008. In 2009, MEPA issued an enforcement order on the site after the construction overstepped its sanctioned footprint.

The Gaffarenas have been a recurrent feature in the Maltese press since it was revealed that Marco Gaffarena was controversially compensated by the Lands Department with €1.65 million in a combined cash and property deal, for the expropriation of his 50% ownership of an Old Mint Street building that houses government offices.

The offices are those of the Building Industry Consultative Council, whose chairman happens to be Labour MP Charles Buttigieg, who has had professional ties with the Gaffarena family.

The compensation is under investigation by the OPM’s internal audit and investigations department and also the Auditor General, and is believed to have placed pressure on the director of Government Property Division, Ray Camilleri, to resign.

While the Nationalist opposition has set much store in claiming that the Gaffarenas had bankrolled various Labour MPs and were now reaping benefits from ministers’ largesse – parliamentary secretary for lands Michael Falzon even went on vacation with the Gaffarenas – it was also revealed that even PN deputy leader for party affairs Beppe Fenech Adami had offered his legal services to the family.

Political links

Joe Gaffarena, a PN activist who lent the embattled opposition some muscle during the violent 1980s, gained notoriety in the 1990s as the concessionaire for the Daewoo car business, roping in politicians like John Dalli as part of his strategy to curry favour with high-powered individuals.

Other business relationships he has had include with former Labour parliamentary secretary for the elderly, Louis Buhagiar, and the former PN secretary-general Joe Saliba.

“His style is to either sell off his shares or making sure he buys his partner’s share when he starts getting cold feet about his partnership,” a former associate of Gaffarena who spoke to MaltaToday said.

A case in point is when he sold his shares in the Daewoo car sales agency to former ambassador Joseph Mary Scicluna. Although Gaffarena’s licence to sell the Korean cars was due to expire, and no agreement to renew it was in place, Gaffarena received several properties, including the Three Rocks Hotel and a large plot of land in Bahrija and the Dacia Car Sales Agency, as well as a cash payment, for his shares in the car business.

In the past he enjoyed a very close association with PN heavyweights and Qormi-based ministers George Hyzler and John Dalli. He later fell out with the Nationalist government at the height of a notorious MEPA enforcement: soldiers were brought in to provide security for MEPA officers to seal off the J. Gaff petrol station in Qormi, which had erected an illegal storey and had illegalities on 80% of the site. The enforcement order was issued three months after Joe Saliba stepped down from the post of secretary-general. And the fall-out edged Gaffarena close to Labour.

Still, Gaffarena entered into business with Saliba when they purchased a block of apartments in the heart of Paceville, four months after Saliba had relinquished his post in the PN in June 2008. The four apartments in Ball Street, which included a penthouse, were purchased at the bargain price of €232,936 in October 2008, and resold exactly a year later for €256,000 to BM Holdings & Investments, a company which together with Gaffarena Holdings owns the firm JGMB Estates Limited (directors Joe Gaffarena and Manuel Bonnici).

Under Labour in 2014, the Gaffarena family was granted a temporary clearance to reopen its petrol station in Qormi against a €500,000 bank guarantee. Gaffarena had said that his eight children had suffered “hardship” for five years due to the station’s closure.

The former parliamentary secretary for planning, Michael Farrugia, defended the decision, insisting that everyone should be given an opportunity to regularise their position, and that Gaffarena had been “promised a permit before the elections”.

But the problems Joe Gaffarena faced with the petrol station pushed him closer to the government of the day. His son Marco was for some time, close to the Labour MP Joe M. Sammut, even supporting his political campaign. At one point both Sammut and Gaffarena were directors of an international trading company, International Tobacco Malta, now in dissolution.

Additionally, the Gaffarena family’s involvement with the family of former acting police commissioner Ray Zammit raised numerous questions of conflicts of interest for the family of police officers; and former police inspector Daniel Zammit’s conduct in the prosecution of Joe Gaffarena’s son-in-law, Stephen Caruana, for murder. The links were the recent subject of an inquiry by Judge Michael Mallia.