Unpaid €3.4 million for Parliament stonework leaves Italian firm in crisis

The Italian company whose stonework gave Valletta the impressive façade to Renzo Piano’s parliament is facing a crisis: and the House of Representatives is being blamed for not forwarding the €3.4 million it owes Parma stonemasons Filiberti for the €12 million in individual stone elements.

Owner Alessandro Filiberti has appealed to prime minister Matteo Renzi and the Italian president Sergio Mattarella, to assist the company in recouping the money it is owed.

“We are facing a crisis and we want to meet around a table,” Bedonia mayor Carlo Berni said.

“We have been waiting for an answer for this past month and a half. Some ten jobs have already been lost due to these financial difficulties. This credit problem is blocking more commissions, which would otherwise be guaranteeing more jobs.”

The Filiberti group is one of Parma’s well known tradesman companies.

Originally, the Italian contractor had complained of delays on the quality of the stone excavated from a Gozo quarry. Filiberti said one of the reasons for the delay was the continuous shortage of stone, which had to be quarried from a site in Ta’ Klement, Qala. The material was then shipped in large blocks to the Parma plant where it is rigorously cut into thousands of different forms and shipped back to Malta.

The Qala stone was used in large quantities for the internal finishes and to clad the two blocks from the outside. Piano’s idea was to use it was to emphasise the Maltese identity in this prime location in the capital.

From a technical perspective, the job was challenging because the stone had to be cut into more than 13,000 different shapes and then shipped back to Malta in more than 400 trucks.

But Filiberti suffered financially because they had to come up with numerous solutions at their own expense to mitigate the situation. “In reality, we ended up shipping more than 200 extra truckloads of stone to satisfy the client,” owner Alessandro said, who complained back in 2014 that the company had not received a single payment for 11 months.

“There’s work available but this job has brought the company to its knees, lowering our credit ranking,” Filiberti said.

The company currently employs 38 people.

Regional delegate for economic development Gianpaolo Cantoni said the crisis the company has found itself in is not of its own doing, pointing out that the Maltese government’s failure to pay has put the company and its employees’ future at risk.

Noting that the company’s closure would be a “mortal sin,” Cantoni said local authorities would be formally asking Matteo Renzi’s government to intervene.

Noting that both Renzi and Italian President Mattarella had both visited the Valletta parliament, Cantoni said “all efforts must be made to safeguard the workers and the region.”

The new parliament building is owned by Malita Investments, a special purpose vehicle that owns the leases for the land and buildings of the Malta International Airport and Valletta Cruise Port terminals, and which trades on the stock exchange.

The company takes the annual rents from MIA and Viset, and reinvests the money in local and foreign stocks and shares as well as issue bonds to the public, raising money for the City Gate project as well as running the project.

Ironically, as opposition leader Joseph Muscat had questioned the financial underpinnings of the City Gate project, saying the government will be renting the parliament from the company that owns it, dubbing it “an unprecedented symbol of democracy in debt.”

But it looks like it’s democracy that has now left someone in debt.