In what is being described by racehorse owners as a surreal situation, a developer involved in the privatisation and running of the Marsa horse racetrack has been appointed by the government to also act as a director on the regulatory agency overseeing the same track and its operators.
The Shift has established that Johann Farrugia, a director and company secretary of Marsa Racetrack Limited, was recently appointed by Education Minister Clifton Grima as a director of EquestriMalta, the public agency regulating the sport.
The government is meanwhile not answering questions about how Farrugia could fairly regulate his own business interests and the gross conflict of interest of both running and regulating the racetrack.
Various horse owners who spoke to The Shift on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution said that they couldn’t believe Farrugia had been appointed to EquestriMalta.
“This is over and above the insult of the government appointing a chairman who has no idea about horses and has never set foot on the racetrack,” one owner said about the minister’s EquestriMalta chairman appointee John Huber.
Before his appointment to the horse racing regulator, Huber was serving as Yachting Malta chairman, a public-private partnership with the Royal Malta Yacht Club. He also acted as a government advisor for the infamous cash-for-passports scheme and is one of its agents.
Farrugia, known as Tad-Dobbu, represents shareholders F. Schembri and Sons – the road and development contractors that, along with other shareholders, in 2019 took possession of the Marsa Racetrack on a 65-year temporary emphyteusis.
According to the deal, struck in the time of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat, the investors, which also include Consolidated Resources (Malta) Ltd – owned by the passport concessionaires Henley & Partners’ boss Hugh Morshead and Irish company True to Type Ltd – was to invest some €30 million to upgrade the track. Little progress, however, has been seen so far.
A Planning Application showing Johann Farrugia as the developer behind the Marsa Race Track’s investors
The Shift reported last year that another shareholder – lawyer Pio Valletta, who negotiated the deal with the government – was bought out by Farrugia.
Apart from his dual role as director at both Marsa Race Track Ltd and EquestriMalta, where he is remunerated €7,000 a year, Farrugia is involved in other equestrian-related companies including Malta Equidrome Development Ltd, Malta Equidrome Leasing Ltd and Malta Equidrome Ltd.
That’s sounds all in line with the PL policy of
‘take any incompetent person into a leading position and make sure, that the person has no clue at all of the job at hand and keep the person bond to the party, so that the person always stays in line with what the party wants’.
The more that emerges from the time of Joseph Muscat as PM of Malta, the more one gets the picture of his attitude which one can put this way ‘you will always have your cake and eat it, as long as you’re doing what you’re told’.
No substance at all, that’s how he and his modernised PL come across. The present PM Abela doesn’t make much of a difference, as this is what he’s been voted in for.
The biggest mistake of this party was to have the most intelligent person with a character of integrity, which nobody of the PL elite would or could ever reach, killed under the watch of Joseph Muscat as PM of Malta.
That person was Daphne Caruana Galizia and the standards she fought for, would be the basis for a very different Republic of Malta, probably a Republic that deserves the very name. A Republic in which the practices of the PL have no place anymore.
Horse play ?
Malta racing track is a laundromat. Most of the time jockeys know who has to win. All horses are so doped they continue running after the finishing line. Stolen horses from France imported in Malta, approved by Maltese customs…
You really dont know what you are saying.. i would like to invite you and see how it works..we are in the dark yes.. but horse racing fixing is a thing of the past . Dope tests are taken weekly..
Horse shit. Corruption everywhere. What a bunch of crooks
These people are just doing what they want, and with all the arrogance now even openly..they just could not care less