Marco Gaffarena has lost an appeal he had filed over his attempt to force the sale of part of an Old Mint Street Property, which was part of an expropriation scandal.

The government had paid the businessman €1.65 million for part-ownership of the Valletta property, which he had bought for a fraction of that price just weeks before. 

In 2018, a court had ordered that the deal be rescinded and all transfers revoked.

Gaffarena had then filed a civil law suit to force the Cefai family to honour the promise of sale they had signed concerning their one-fourth of the property. He had lost that case, subsequently filing an appeal.

But his latest bid was thrown out by the Court of Appeal, which was presided over by Mr Justices Giannino Caruana Demajo, Tonio Mallia and Anthony Ellul.

The court said that the expropriation declaration issued by the President of Malta simply mentioned “one-fourth undivided share of a block” without specifying the targeted owners.

The court said that expropriation is aimed at property and not physical persons. It said that expropriation was very different from a sale, in that the sale of part of a property could be carried out, but expropriation affected the whole of the property.

The appeal was dismissed, with the court ordering Gaffarena to bear all costs.