The ongoing police investigations into the application for a discotheque at Mistra Bay have led to some members of the Development Control Commission being detained overnight.

These are the same members of the DCC (Mepa has two such boards) that resigned en bloc following adverse comments by Mepa’s Auditor regarding the permission for a supermarket at Safi.

Although the names of the DCC board members were always available on the Mepa website (in Mepa’s annual report section), this is the first time the names of the DCC are being revealed (See FAA statement on page 5).

The statement is, as far as possible, updated to exclude the names of people who resigned from DCC before the Mistra Bay application was discussed and approved.

Various media reports in the past days have said the police are nearing the end of their investigations and will soon seek the advice of the Attorney General on what they have discovered.

Also among the people investigated by the police was George Micallef who, it has now become clear, was the consultant who produced the “very favourable” report for the Spin Valley project in Mistra on behalf of the developers, and also the man who penned the equally-favourable Malta Tourism Authority strategic plan for the area, which was said to have had a bearing on the approval of the project’s outline permit.

Mr Micallef, who headed Prime Minister Alfred Sant’s task force in Bugibba in 1997, has since resigned as MTA consultant, insisting that his resignation was not an admission of guilt.

He also joined Mistra landowner, MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, in declining to comment, as there are ongoing police investigations in the matter.

It was Mepa’s Audit Officer Joe Falzon who, in a highly critical report published last Monday, pointed out that certain statements in the MTA strategic report were, word for word, the same as the report produced on behalf of the applicant.

Criticising this and the approval by the DCC board, Mr Falzon said with decisions such as these “accusations of corruption are inevitable and difficult to refute”.