Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1453707
13 NEWS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 20 FEBRUARY 2022 around €1,000 in total. Princess Operations won a tender issued in July 2020 for the lease of 38 low emission motor vehicles, a crew-cargo van and two self-drive vans with Transport Malta. The offer of Princess Operations had been the cheapest, but the runner-up tenderer still went to court, claiming irregularities in the bidding process. In the appeal, Davico Limited raised doubts on whether Princess Opera- tions could really take into ac- count all the real costs of full insurance cover as requested in the tender and claimed it did not possess the required num- ber of vehicles. The appeal was rejected by a court in January. On Friday, Nationalist MP Ja- son Azzopardi claimed Trans- port Malta had returned the leased cars to Borg's company. MaltaToday sent questions to Transport Malta to confirm the veracity of these claims, but did not receive a confirmation of whether the cars were returned. "DOC Tender CT2199/2020 was evaluated as per Public Procurement regulations and procedures. The tender was challenged in front of the Public Contracts Review Tribunal, as well as at the Apeals Court, and both cases were judges in favour of the Authority for Transport. The Authority will follow the established procedures," TM said. The tender on the government website however still shows that this tender was at an evaluation stage, so it should not have been the case that the cars were al- ready leased. As part of the tendering pro- cess, any bidding company has to declare that no person of the administrative body was ever subject to a criminal conviction. Borg was, at the time of the bid, director of the company with Milton registered as com- pany secretary. According to the court doc- uments, the runner-up was in- formed by a letter on 18 June 2021 that Princess Operations had won the bid. Yet in June 2021, Milton was charged with fraudulently ob- taining $700,000 from a car dealer and storing them in a crypto wallet. Milton proceed- ed to resign his role as com- pany secretary on 6 July 2021, although the Malta Business Registry document backdates the effective resignation to 16 June 2021. Borg, on the other hand, had minor convictions. In 2015 he was found guilty of breaking car hire laws, when changing the car registration plates from one car to the other and using unauthorised number plates. In 2021, he was found guilty of perjury, when offering false tes- timony in court. It remains to be seen whether in light of Milton's and Borg's criminal records, Princess Op- erations' bid should have been declared invalid. Joseph Camenzuli has in re- cent days become the director of the company, although Borg remains the sole sharehold- er, through his other company Princess Holdings Limited. Princess Operations had also won a tender, SPD2/2021/042, to lease 24 cars to the Local Enforcement System Agency (LESA). The tender had been is- sued on 22 September 2021 and awarded on 18 January 2022, a week before Borg was arraigned on the Rabat abduction inci- dent. MaltaToday sent questions to LESA to confirm whether the tender is in the process of being revoked. "The said tender was issued as per normal procedure and in line with the applicable legisla- tion. The process has been fully completed, including any peri- od of appeal being exhausted. The said tender was evaluated in line with the Procurement regulations, and with the nec- essary vetting and approvals as stipulated by the Department of Contracts. LESA shall com- ply to any orders issued by the department of contracts or the courts," LESA said. Attempts to reach Joe Camen- zuli on his cell phone and home address proved futile. JAMES DEBONO A five-storey block for 12 apartments and a penthouse is being proposed in the pro- tected Wied il-Għasel valley in Mosta, a short distance from the Mosta bridge, at the inter- face between the valley and the urban area. The 568sq.m vacant site is at the edge of the valley and hosts a number of mature trees, and is part of a larger area recog- nised as an 'Area of Ecological Importance' and a 'Site of Sci- entific Importance'. Residents in the area who spoke to MaltaToday are shocked by the audacity of the application, describing it as a clear non-starter which should not have even been considered. In fact only a small part of the site is inside the development zone, while most of it is already outside the building zones (ODZ) and is also listed as an archaeological buffer zone for a Punic tomb discovered in the area. The site is accessed from a narrow alley leading to the val- ley. The Environment and Re- sources Authority has already warned that that this narrow al- ley is not amenable to adequate vehicular access, and creating such an access and providing infrastructural services to the proposed apartment block will require "substantial interven- tions that would have a signif- icant adverse impact on the surrounding countryside". ERA is objecting to the ap- plication, warning that this involves "an extensive land up- take at the expense of the pro- tected valley", resulting in "the further degradation of the rural landscape". The proposed development could also set a precedent for similar proposals in the sur- rounding area, contributing to a "cumulative urbanisation of the valley and the countryside" which "should be rigorously avoided". In its objection, the ERA de- scribed creeping urbanisation as "the most critical environ- mental concern at both nation- al and local level." The application was pre- sented by site owner Emma- nuel Mifsud, whose architect is former Labour MP Charles Buhagiar, the latter doubling as chairman of the Building In- dustry Consultative Council. Way back in 1996, an appli- cation presented by the same applicant to erect eleven in- ternal garages was rejected by the Planning Authority. In an appeal against this decision, the owner argued that the site is surrounded by development on all three sites and that other developments were allowed in the area. But the appeal was re- jected in 1999. Wied il-Ghasel threatened by five-storey block ERA objects to valley development insisting that urban sprawl is Malta's most critical environmental problem