Adrian Delia buying new Siġġiewi property despite still owing over €80,000 in tax arrears

Opposition leader Adrian Delia is currently in the act of buying a new property in Siġġiewi, despite still having to pay more than €80,000 in tax arrears.

The Sunday Times of Malta reports that the property, at 119, Triq il-Kbira, Siġġiewi, was not mentioned in the financial statement of affairs which Delia published in September last year, shortly prior to being elected Nationalist Party leader.

Delia’s wife, Nickie Vella De Fermaux, applied for planning permission to perform structural changes to the property to connect it to their current home in Siġġiewi, the newspaper said.

The Opposition leader’s statement of affairs as of August 2017 lists debts of over €700,000 in personal and home bank loans, as well as more than €100,000 in credit card bills and overdrafts.

Delia told the newspaper that he had omitted the property from his September financial statement because it was still under a promise of sale agreement.

He maintained that his tax arrears were in no way related to cash flow problems, emphasising that “The taxes will be paid. One [issue] has nothing to do with the other. The taxes will be paid before I purchase.”

This goes contrary to what a Delia spokesperson told the same newspaper last year - that the principal reason behind the tax arrears was an issue of “a cash flow nature”.

Delia told The Sunday Times that he would attempt to get a loan for the new property, and, if unable to, would finance it in other ways.