Developer charged with Sofia case reinstated at Lands Authority

Kurt Buhagiar, one of the developers charged with the involuntary homicide of 20-year-old Jean Paul Sofia, has been given back his government job following his suspension in 2023.

The Shift is informed that, at the insistence of Lands Authority’s CEO Robert Vella, Lands Minister Owen Bonnici gave the green light for Buhagiar to be reinstated in his job on full pay.

Buhagiar – the driver and ‘right hand man’ of CEO Vella, was suspended on half pay from his job when, in July 2023, he was arraigned in Court and accused, with others, of serious criminal offences, including the involuntary homicide of Sofia.

According to long-established public sector rules, employees facing criminal charges are automatically suspended on half pay.

However, this rule has lately been relaxed, with Prime Minister Robert Abela now deciding who should be suspended or not, according to unknown criteria. A case in point is Ronald Mizzi, who is also under Court indictment for money laundering charges, and has been reinstated as a Permanent Secretary.

Lands Authority sources told The Shift that, following pressure from the CEO, who wanted Buhagiar back at all costs, Minister Owen Bonnici gave in, and Buhagiar was reinstated to his job, despite his pending criminal charges.

Vella’s move came immediately after the Prime Minister removed the Lands portfolio from Minister Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi and assigned it to the more accommodating Owen Bonnici. The Shift reported that Zrinzo Azzopardi wanted out as he could not bear the pressure from Castille on upcoming public land deals.

Asked to confirm Buhagiar’s reinstatement, despite his pending criminal charges and to explain the reason, both Minister Owen Bonnici and CEO Robert Vella remained tight-lipped.

Upon his suspension, Buhagiar was known as Robert Vella’s ‘factotum’, driving him around and ‘speaking’ in his name.

The Naxxar resident, who is also involved in many business dealings, already has a criminal record.

In 2011, at a young age, he spent a year in prison in Ragusa, Sicily, after being caught for human trafficking.

Just before the 2017 election, Buhagiar was given a job as a ‘fitter’ at the Water Services Corporation as part of disgraced former Minister Konrad Mizzi’s vote-buying exercise. However, when he was there, he was immediately proclaimed as the driver of the then-Chairman William Wait.

Interestingly, William Wait was later the Chairman of Malta Enterprise at the time when Buhagiar, together with his business partner Matthew Schembri, were given a letter of intent by the government entity to build a timber factory in Kordin on government land.

The Sofia inquiry concluded that the letter of intent and project approval should never have been approved. Wait, still in office, had insisted that he had nothing to do with his former driver’s project approval.

The collapsed factory, built without a permit and which killed Sofia and injured several others, was being constructed by Allplus Ltd, in which Buhagiar has a 50% shareholding.

He is also a shareholder in two other companies – SC Real Estate Ltd, which he owns in conjunction with two Italians, and 5B Limited. The latter is now in the process of dissolution.

He is also a director of the Koperattiva Produtturi tal-Bhejjem Limitata.

Incidentally, just a few years ago, Buhagiar also managed to turn a bare field in Naxxar into a goat farm and received hundreds of thousands of euros in subsidies from the EU.

An inquiry on claims of fraud by the EU found no wrongdoing by Buhagiar.