Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1447299
NEWS 5 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 2 FEBRUARY 2022 Abela Dynasty: PA contract gifted by Nationalists and Labour alike MATTHEW VELLA ROBERT Abela's fat pay- cheque from the Planning Au- thority did not just fall on his lap thanks to Labour's now typ- ical largesse with the party elite. 19 years ago, his father George Abela – a moderate Labour grandee whom the Nationalists believed held the key to the par- ty's re-election chances – was gifted this most lucrative of contracts. And the reason was that the PA wanted to kick out its own in-house lawyer, a whis- tle blower who took his own employer to court. Tony De Gaetano was MEPA's head of legal services in 2000. But when he decided to take the authority to court over a permit he believed had been illegal, he ended up being reprimanded and then assigned to handle on- ly the authority's appeals cases while his workload was trans- ferred elsewhere. In a legal saga that spanned right up to 2015, De Gaetano – brother to the Chief Justice emeritus – won defamation lawsuits against the authority, reversed his reprimand, ob- tained the courts' confirmation that the contested MEPA per- mit issued back in 1998 had in fact been illegal, and ultimately, obtained an out-of-court set- tlement of €250,000 from the Planning Authority in 2015 so that he retires. De Gaetano not only chal- lenged his own employer in an uncharacteristic show of scrupolous fault-finding with MEPA's rule-bending; he had filed court cases personally al- leging the falsification of plans and a mishandling of a planning application by the firm of Sant and Mugliett – the latter part- ner the Nationalist transport minister Jesmond Mugliett at the time. But De Gaetano's sidelining by MEPA in 2001 opened the door to one of the most lucrative legal contracts on the island – Abela Stafrace & Associates was given the authority's caseload afte ra call for expression of interest, and the contract was renewed without tender, and without question by both the National- ist and Labour administrations. At the time, placating George Abela with such a contract sounded like a shrewd move. He was a former Labour deputy leader who resigned in 1998 af- ter opposing the party's plan for early elections. Keeping Abela, considred by the PN a puller for Labour, away from a possible leadership challenge was a way for the Nationalists to have the unpopular Alfred Sant stay in charge of Labour. After Robert Abela's father was appointed President of the Republic in 2009 (Abela had lost the leadership bid to Joseph Muscat, and the Gonzi admin- istration believed distancing him from Labour again was good strategy...), the caseload was left to partner Ian Stafrace. Then in 2011 he was hand- picked by the Nationalist ad- ministration (no call for appli- cations then...) to become its CEO. Robert Abela and wife Lydia Abela stepped in to con- tinue the firm's work. Today Ian Strafrace is often one of the go- to lawyers on difficult planning cases for the private sector. At the time of Stafrace's ap- pointment as CEO, the Labour opposition had criticised the direct appointment for the lack of a public call, saying the ap- pointment proved "government interference" at the regulator. Later at the 2012 Labour gen- eral conference, Roberta Abela told delegates that the Nation- alist administration had offered "20 years of the same faces". He retained the contract upon Labour's re-election and right before his election as Labour leader in 2020, agonised over whether his family should give up their PA brief. Between 2001 and 2011, Ab- ela, Stafrace & Associates, se- lected through an expression of interest, was paid a total of €1.23 million for its services. The contract was extended into 2013, and then renewed again for the fee of €107,263 annually and €54.99 for each hour of "ad- ditional work". This springboard for unlimited money, borne out of the mis- treatment of a MEPA employee, and the exigencies of separate government administrations, is what led to the Abela's feudal system inside the Planning Au- thority: €123,000 in direct orders from the PA, over and above their €17,000-per-month retain- er. This apart from legal consul- tancies from ARMS, Air Malta, and the Environment Ministry. When a whistleblower was punished by MEPA, the Nationalist administration opened the door to the Abelas, hand-picked Ian Stafrace for CEO, while Labour kept the money pipeline open