Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1141804
3 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 14 JULY 2019 coach Steve Vella, for the an- nouncement of the club's new signings. According to the Malta In- dependent, the Malta Football Association can only preclude Debono from being a commit- tee official if he has a criminal record. "He has no criminal record yet as far as we know but the alleged criminality is huge," the newspaper reported its source as saying. Reuben Debono was quoted on Net FM's Replay Ikompli, as saying that Darren Debono will have "an important role" within the club and will be "more than just a committee member". The president said that he had been approached by Darren Debono, who said that he would like to help the club in the best way possible. Darren Debono represented Malta at international level 56 times between 1996 and 2002, having had long spells playing with clubs Sliema Wanderers and Valletta FC. NEWS Friends and associates: Libyan smuggling king Fahmi Slim Bin Khalifa (left) on his arrest by the Rada militia in 2017; a month later, Darren Debono and Gordon Debono, as well as mafia associate Nicola Orazio Romeo, were arrested in Italy. Romeo had his offshore companies registered at Debono's San Gwann address, where his companies are housed Below: All smiles for the camera as Darren Debono (left) returns to the world of football as an official on the board of Senglea Athletic FC. Debono is currently busy trying to stop the transport ministry from deregistering his six ships MATTHEW AGIUS SILVIO Debono's DB Group has filed a judicial protest demanding damages from the Planning Authority, arguing that a recent court decision against its City Centre project failed to safe-guard its right to a fair hearing. In a ruling issued in June, the Court of Appeal declared the planning per- mit granted in September last year for DB's City Centre project in St George's Bay, to be null and void. Judge Mark Chetcuti had ruled that Planning Authority board member Matthew Pace had a conflict of inter- est because of his involvement in a REMAX real estate franchise with an interest in selling property units in City Centre, when he voted on the project, and revoked the permit. The judicial protest, signed by lawyers Ste- fano Filletti and Edward Gatt, demands the Authority liquidate and pay damages, holding it "directly and solely" responsible for the fi- nancial losses incurred by the Group. The DB Group will be re-activating its ap- plication for a permit to construct the City Centre development on the site of the for- mer Institute for Tourism Studies (ITS). "The [court] revocation was based exclusively on one, single point: that the court deemed that a member of the adjudicating Board had a con- flict of interest," the company said. "Clearly, this had absolutely nothing to do with the DB Group and even less so with the project itself." The court appeal which resulted in the rev- ocation of the permit, was made possible by a crowd-funding initiative by NGOs, local councils and residents. The €300 million City Centre project, which includes a 37-storey tower and 17-storey ho- tel, was approved in September 2018 despite an unprecedented 4,500 objections from the public, local councils and NGOs. Controversy surrounded the granting of the ITS public land to the DB Group in 2017 for a premium of €15 million spread over seven years. The government would have also raked in €23.4 million from redeemed leases once the residential apartment are sold. Yesterday, NGOs and three local councils encouraged the public to file objections to the new application. "The application for stand-alone excavation is a clear case of an attempt to evade a holistic evaluation of the full impacts of the develop- ment. It is obvious that the whole planning and assessment procedure is being split into many stages to avoid having a study on the whole, final, gargantuan project and its en- vironmental and related impacts," the NGOs said. The proposed excavation provides no indi- cation of what is to become of the excavation waste. Yet the excavation of the former ITS site was part of the DB group's original permit. "Filing a separate application for excavation at this stage is clearly in contempt of court and a bla- tant ruse to circumvent the effects of the rul- ing. It is illogical to request a permit for exca- vation in relation to a project for which there is no permit in hand. Such an application can mean only two things: that the approval of the whole project is a foregone conclusion, thus admitting that the planning system is a farce, or that there is the risk of excavations taking place without the project being eventually ap- proved, leaving a massive hole and a site ru- ined beyond repair. It is one way or the other," the NGOs said. The local councils comprise Pembroke, St Julian's and Swieqi, while the NGOs include BirdLife, Din l-Art Ħelwa, Flimkien għal Am- bjent Aħjar, Friends of the Earth Malta, Movi- ment Graffitti and Nature Trust. DB group to take Planning Authority to court NGOs and local councils mount new campaign to object to excavation permits for DB's City Centre project