Moviment Graffitti has filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Planning Authority’s (PA) FOI Officer to demand access to all electronic communication between the PA’s CEO Martin Saliba, all members of its Executive Council, and developer Joseph Portelli.

Moviment Graffitti filed the FOI request following yet another irregular decision taken by the Planning Commission in what the NGO called yet another instance of bending the rules to appease Portelli’s interests.

On 9 February, the Planning Commission was set to decide on a massive application featuring 73 apartments and 60 garages in Sannat’s Ta’ Ċenċ area, which was filed by Portelli and his associates, Mark Agius and Daniel Refalo. Instead, the Planning Commission decided to ask for guidance from the PA’s Executive Council, a separate body within the PA which is not responsible for the processing of such applications.

The next hearing is now scheduled for Tuesday 1 March at noon.

“Portelli and his associates were, time and time again, allowed to bend the rules in favour of their monstrous projects,” the NGO said.

“In fact, the application in the Ta’ Ċenċ area passed on to the Executive Council following insistent requests from Portelli’s architect during the hearing on 9 February, special treatment given to a piecemeal application that is only one part of a wider, much larger complex consisting of 125 apartments,” it added.

In light of the Commission’s “highly irregular decision and Portelli’s track record as a developer who proudly admitted to using politicians to speed up the processes facilitating his greed”, Moviment Graffitti said that it believes it is high time the public gets to have access to all correspondence, meetings, emails and other exchanges between all members of the PA’s Executive Council and Portelli.

Moviment Graffitti has repeatedly drawn attention towards the Executive Chairperson of the PA, Martin Saliba, in particular.

Saliba, who is widely known as the former chair of the Environment Planning Review Tribunal (EPRT), was exposed as having a massive conflict of interest when it was revealed he was also an employee at the PA whilst heading a tribunal that hears cases against the PA. The same Martin Saliba now heads the PA itself, an authority which the NGO said has proven to be toothless against sharks like Portelli.

To begin with, the authority already failed to heed its own case officer’s advice for the first Portelli application in Ta’ Ċenċ, approving the permit in spite of a clear recommendation for refusal, the NGO pointed out. 

In yet another set of piecemeal applications in Sannat, the Planning Commission once more went against recommendations for refusal of its own case officers during the hearing of the third application connected to the same project, ignoring several policy breaches in favour of churning out yet another batch of hundreds of Portelli’s apartments, the NGO added.

“When Portelli conducted illegal excavation works in Qala’s ODZ, the PA failed to take action against a developer who had clearly breached planning laws. Also, no action seems to have been taken against extensive illegal works by Portelli right at the edge of the Ta’ Ċenċ cliffs, adjacent to his massive development in Sannat, and which is likely connected to the same project. Apartments in this project are already being advertised as having “landscaped gardens”, a worrying sign for the integrity of this ecologically sensitive site and public access to the Ta’ Ċenċ cliffs,” it said.

“Faced with overwhelming evidence which shows that the authorities have failed to safeguard our land by respecting their own planning policies,” Moviment Graffitti said that it feels there is no further reason to doubt the only logical explanation: the PA takes its orders from people like Portelli, not from the people who it is supposed to protect.

“We’d love to see Saliba and the rest of the Executive Council prove us otherwise,” it said.