The db Group, developers of the controversial €300 million City Centre project in St George’s Bay, is demanding what could turn out to be pretty hefty damages from the Planning Authority.
The move comes after a judge last month sent the project back to the drawing board because one of the Planning Authority board members who had approved the project was found to have had a conflict of interest.
Silvio Debono’s db Group on Friday filed a judicial protest demanding damages from the Planning Authority, arguing that a recent court decision against the enormous project on the former Institute of Tourism Studies site, had failed to safeguard its right to a fair hearing.
In a ruling last month, the Court of Appeal declared the planning permit granted last September null and void.
Asked what level of compensation is being sought, a spokesperson yesterday said that, “The db Group has made the claim to court and it will be the legal process that will take it to the next level.”
Judge Mark Chetcuti ruled that planning board member Matthew Pace had had a conflict of interest because of his involvement in real estate when he voted on the project and revoked the permit.
Pace is the franchise owner of RE/MAX Alliance Swieqi, which shares a database and website with RE/MAX Malta. The agency was found to have been selling the project’s apartments before a planning permit had even been issued.
The court case came about after The Shift News revealed the glaring conflict of interest.
The judicial protest, signed by lawyers Stefano Filletti and Edward Gatt, demands the authority liquidate and pay damages, holding it “directly and solely” responsible for the financial losses incurred by the group.
The db Group last week said it would be reactivating the application process for the project, the environmental community’s current bête noire, arguing that the revocation was based exclusively on one, single point: the conflict of interest and that “this has absolutely nothing to do with the db Group and even less to do with the project itself.”
The court, the group correctly observed, had steered completely clear of the merits of the permit itself and at no point did it express itself on the project, how the permit was issued or the db Group itself.
In view of this, the db Group “is currently reactivating the application for a full permit, with some alterations and rescaling which have been in gestation since the original permit was issued last September.”
The db Group insists that it has “rigorously followed all the applicable laws and procedures of every institution involved. We shall continue to do so with rectitude, openness and determination. It is with this same approach that we shall ensure that our group enjoys its full rights at law – the same ones enjoyed by others.”
Now that it has upped the ante and is taking the Planning Authority to serious task and demanding financial compensation for lost time and missed deadlines on a €300 million project, the consequences of Pace’s actions may prove to be very costly indeed for the Planning Authority and, by default, the taxpayer.