It has been barely a month since the publication of the damning National Audit Office report on the Old Mint Street scandal. That report pointed to collusion in a case which involved the handing out of public property and taxpayers’ money in compensation for the piecemeal acquisition of part of a property without a public purpose.

The immediate and most prominent consequence in the report’s wake was the removal of Michael Falzon as Parliamentary Secretary responsible for lands. It was the least Prime Minister Joseph Muscat could do to save his government some face. This was followed by the Prime Minister’s announcement of a radical reform in the Lands Department, another political pledge from Castille for an increased effort to deliver on the good governance electoral pledge and the appointment of a new parliamentary secretary.

And yet, public perception was that it was a case of too little, too late.

The central issue in the Old Mint Street case revolves around how and why a junior minister, incidentally falling directly under the Prime Minister’s remit, signed off on transactions that contained several conspicuous flaws that should never have escaped even the most primitive of due diligence procedures.

Public outrage was compounded by the Prime Minister’s belated action in the face of evidence of blatant abuse which had been flagged for months in media reports and which the NAO’s report only served to confirm in greater detail.

Today this newspaper has revealed a fresh case on how a property located on the panoramic Dingli Cliffs had been originally granted to the Dingli Local Council for use as an interpretation centre, but was eventually handed over to a private company that turned it into a privately-run restaurant – apparently against the development permit issued by Mepa and possibly in violation of the original lease agreement between the Lands Department and the Dingli local council.

It is quite clear that planning policy does not allow new development in Outside Development Zones for the purpose of Class 6 (catering) activities, let alone when this is a stand-alone development at the top of the environmentally-sensitive Dingli Cliffs and on public property.

The suspicion – that once a development permit was obtained for new premises under the guise of an interpretative centre, the opportunity was seized to turn the site, with its breathtaking views, into a restaurant – is too strong to ignore.

The timeline of events fuels the suspicion that this conversion was contemplated even before a public tender for the development was launched. The facts that the company which won the Dingli local council’s tender for the interpretative centre was registered less than a week before the publication of the tender by a sole individual who happens to be a chef from Dingli, and that the company was the sole bidder may be purely coincidental, but they may also point to collusion in the tendering process.

The repeated attempt by Dr Borg in the 2008 application to include Class 6 activities when Mepa had already rejected catering facilities on the same site in a previous outline development permit in 2005, and his involvement in a ‘minor amendment’ application for the installation of an underground LPG gas tank without any publicly documented justification and without documentation in council minutes require adequate public explanations.

Complicating matters further still, in 2012, after the site had already commenced its catering services, the private operator was awarded EU and public funds for the project. It is normal for the terms of EU-funded schemes to require that projects funded are fully authorised with Mepa permits that are adhered to.

But even from an economic viewpoint alone, it is hard to justify why a private company which is given the use of a jewel of a public property on Dingli Cliffs, for a restaurant, should also be given EU funds to make it sustainable.

The case has now been referred to the EU and Maltese agencies responsible for investigating fraud and other irregularities. Given the facts of the case, and putting those facts within the context of the mishandling of government properties and public money in the recent Old Mint Street scandal, investigative action by those authorities into the new case is more than warranted. The law, and in some cases the Constitution itself, endows those authorities with investigative powers not otherwise available to the media or private citizens, and which, if exercised properly and in full respect of the fundamental rights of the persons involved – including the presumption that anyone involved in the case is innocent until proven guilty in terms of law – should lead to establishing the truth.

The case is likely to be a particular challenge to Judge Lawrence Quintano, who as chairman of the Commission Against Corruption is expected to investigate a case involving government property ultimately owned by the Lands Department, for which the Prime Minister has now tasked him to directly oversee the transition to a transparent and accountable authority.

The role played by Dr Borg in the case, especially his apparent inaction while he was still mayor of Dingli in 20122013 to regulate the misuse of the interpretation centre, and which he inaugurated in November 2012, complicates his political and administrative responsibility.

Dr Borg is also Parliamentary Secretary for EU funds, a position responsible for accountability and transparency of EU funds. It is this responsibility and his failure to demand an investigation into the EU funds awarded to the private company which is likely to come under close scrutiny by OLAF and the European Court of Auditors when they consider his role in the case.

Dr Borg was already in the eye of the storm for most of 2015 due to a probe into the circumstances in which Mepa issued a permit on a property he bought in 2014 in Rabat. A report by the Commissioner for Environment and Planning in the Office of the Ombudsman found that Dr Borg used a “devious method” by filing his application under the name of a third party, and that “the series of omissions and variations in the text of the DPAR in Borg’s application cannot be put down to human error but point to a deliberate attempt to remove the one remaining obstacle potentially blocking approval of the application”. The findings of the Commissioner were endorsed by the Commission Against Corruption.

After the spate of scandals which characterised 2015, the Prime Minister promised to tackle good governance “head-on”. Faced with the latest case involving government property, and public and EU funds, he must take quick and decisive political action and request those responsible to shoulder political responsibility.

Anything short of clear political action by the Prime Minister would reinforce the public’s perception that this government is unable or unwilling to guarantee good governance. Only that this time round, with EU institutions having been brought into the fray, it is not only the trust in this government which is at risk, but also the country’s reputation.