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Maltatoday 22 October 2017

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maltatoday SUNDAY 22 OCTOBER 2017 News PAUL COCKS THE Lands Authority is in the pro- cess of transferring a tract of land in Gharghur to the SportsMalta agency, despite the project not yet having been approved by MPs. The project is for a stadium for Naxxar Lions FC, which has attract- ed the interest of Syrian-Canadian investor Yahya Kirdi with a €10 mil- lion commercialisation project. The transfer of land to Sports- Malta is proceeding despite the is- sue not having yet been brought be- fore parliament and despite the fact that the investor's plans are clearly in conflict with the Commercialisa- tion of Sports Facilities Regulations. Two letters of intent have already been issued in May this year – right in the middle of the 2017 election campaign – one by the parliamen- tary secretariat for youth, sport, and one by the Lands Authority. MaltaToday is informed that the parliamentary secretariat set up a commission to vet applications for projects falling under the new sports facilities rules. The primary role of this commission will be to ensure that all the projects pro- posed, not only provide a financial return to the investors, but also pro- vide a clear path to growth and ben- efit for the sports clubs involved. Chris Bonnett, the new Sports- Malta CEO and also a senior con- sultant to parliamentary secretary Clifton Grima said that the law was there to ensure that commercial in- terests do not trump sporting ben- efits. "In the case of the proposed Naxx- ar football club development, as in all other applications, the investor must not only show how he intends to recoup his investment, but also how the club is to become economi- cally feasible and how the plan will benefit the club," he said. "The commission will ensure that the interests of the sports club are safeguarded as well as those of the investors," he said. In this specific case, the investor's plans include the development of a hotel – but the law clearly states that such commercialisation pro- jects cannot include hotels. This is not Yahya Kirdi's first at- tempt to invest in a football club, al- beit it is far from the lofty ambitions he entertained some years ago. Kirdi joined the football club's board in May after club president and hotelier Michael Zammit Ta- bona was advised by former Man- chester United player David Creery that Kirdi was looking to invest in a football club. Kirdi had previously claimed to have a consortium from Canada and the Middle East to raise enough funds for a takeover of Liverpool FC but he was subsequently dismissed as a serious bidder by the club. In April this year, Kirdi was re- portedly fronting a bid to acquire small, fourth-tier football club Carlisle United in the UK, but in the end did not take over the Blues. Kirdi was in fact represented in talks with the Blues by McCreery's son Nick. Little information is available as to whether Kirdi is actually a billion- aire. His company AK Obec Petro- leum Ltd, set up in 2015, does not seem to have its own website. Kirdi's Wikipedia account, trans- lated from Arabic, claims that he was a "Lebanese star" and even ap- pointed by the United Nations as its Ambassador to the World and Ambassador of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Can- ada, although this is not sufficiently corroborated by any statement from official UN sources. pcocks@mediatoday.com.mt Controversial Naxxar stadium plan got letter of intent during election Syrian 'billionaire' Yahya Kirdi (left) was welcomed to the Naxxar Lions board of directors by Michael Zammit Tabona

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