Standards report on Fenech-Farrugia Mrieħel meeting goes to committee

A 2014 meeting between Yorgen Fenech and then parliamentary secretary responsible for planning Michael Farrugia that allegedly resulted in Mrieħel’s being declared a high-rise zone will come under parliamentary scrutiny after the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life handed it over to the committee.

Independent politician Arnold Cassola had filed a complaint to the Commissioner after a Times of Malta report showed the Planning Authority included Mrieħel in its high-rise policy on the same day that alleged Daphne Caruana Galizia murder mastermind Yorgen Fenech paid a visit to Farrugia at his office in Castille.

The Quad high-rise was later developed in Mrieħel by the Tumas Group, where Fenech was an executive director at the time, and the Gasan Group. The two groups are also partners in the ElectroGas power station consortium.

Documents obtained by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation back in 2020 through a Freedom of Information request show how Fenech signed in for a meeting with Farrugia at the Office of the Prime Minister, where Farrugia’s office was located at the time, at 9.27 am on 5 March 2014. The meeting was relatively short with Fenech having signed out at 9.53 am.

Later that day Farrugia wrote to the Planning Authority CEO instructing that: “Mrieħel is to be considered as an appropriate location for tall buildings with the intention to create a strategic employment node”.

A mere six months later, the Tumas and Gasan Groups filed a planning application for the controversial development.

Cassola had reported Farrugia – who was later made a minister and is currently an MP – for lying about the meeting when he first denied meeting Fenech at Castille. But when confronted with evidence from the OPM’s visitors’ log, he changed his version of events and acknowledged the meeting but said it had nothing to do with Mrieħel.

Farrugia had also insisted it had been the evaluation committee on the public consultation on potential high-rise areas that decided on Mrieħel’s late inclusion in the policy. The area was, however, never even mentioned in the public consultation document itself. Cassola had also called out Farrugia for lying when he said he did not have access to the committee’s documentation when the documentation was easily accessible.

“The conclusions of this investigation have now been sent to the Parliamentary Committee on Standards in Public Life,” Cassola said this morning. “When this happens, this normally means that some wrongdoing on the part of the minister has been identified by the Commissioner for Standards.

“Unfortunately, despite being the complainant, the law prohibits me from having access to the findings and conclusions of an investigation initiated by me.”