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maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER 2014 News 5 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Callus said that under Labour, the director- general of the Government Property Division was no longer the Lands Commissioner, and that Bugeja was forced to sign decisions that he was legally responsible for. "Yet Bugeja was excluded from im- portant meetings and then made to sign decisions anyway. Is it because the government wanted the legal responsibility of these decisions to fall on Bugeja? He is a victim of ugly politics." Callus also called on the govern- ment to keep the opposition in- formed about the Auditor General's inquiry into the Cafe Premier lease acquisition. In a letter signed last month by PN MPs Tonio Fenech, Claudio Grech, Kristy Debono, and Jason Azzop- ardi, the Nationalist Party said it wanted the Auditor General to in- vestigate why €4.2 million was paid to Cities Entertainment to acquire the lease. "We have not yet had any official confirmation that the Auditor Gen- eral is investigating it," Callus said. "The opposition has a right to be kept updated." Callus also said that the Lands Department was forced to stop its court case on the revocation of the Australia Hall lease. "The department's 1157 telephone service, to anonymously report ille- galities, no longer exists. complaints of squatters are now coming in at the PN headquarters." "The Prime Minister called for na- tional unity during last weekend's independence celebrations," Callus said. "Does he believe those words though? Time and time again, the government is creating a gap be- tween those people who are close to them and those who aren't." NAO inquiry The opposition has asked the Au- ditor General to carry out an inves- tigation into the €4.2 million paid out by the government to buy back a 65-year lease for the Café Premier in Valletta. MaltaToday first revealed that the government had paid Cities Enter- tainment Ltd €4.2 million to buy back the government lease for the Café Premier, when the company was facing a court action to pay €200,000 in rental arrears to the Lands Department. The deal was reached by Mario Camilleri, as a representative of M&A Investments – a shareholder in Cities Entertainment – and ar- chitect John Sciberras, a former di- rector-general of the Lands Depart- ment who now serves as a consultant at the Office of the Prime Minister. The Lands Department accepted to pay €4.2 million to Cities Enter- tainment to allow it to pay back all its dues to the State – rent, income tax, utility bills, VAT, even bank loan arrears, and factored in a €210,000 payment for Cities Entertainment shareholder M&A Investments, which wanted a shareholders' loan to be paid back. The public deed specifically out- lined what the €4.2 million had to be used for: €307,346 to settle outstand- ing arrears with the government property division and €504,000 in capital gains tax owed on the land; €192,748 to the Inland Revenue De- partment to settle income tax and social security payments, €227,058 to the VAT Department on out- standing dues and legal procedures against the company, and €130,963 in energy bills for ARMS; and €3,265 to creditors Golden Harvest. Finally, another €2,560,800 was to be paid to Banif Bank, in four instal- ments, in settlement of the outstand- ing bank loans that Cities Entertain- ment held with the bank. HUMAN rights organisations in Malta have called for a more com- prehensive and humane way of preventing and handling tragedies at sea, after hundreds of lives were claimed during treacherous migra- tory crossings in the Mediterra- nean. "Prevention of these tragedies cannot be postponed any longer. Safe and legal means of accessing protection must be established. For example, the European Union should explore the possibility of establishing humanitarian visas. It should also revisit its limitation on the right to family reunification for beneficiaries of subsidiary pro- tection, thereby potentially saving thousands of lives. European Union Member States should further in- crease their annual refugee reset- tlement quota," the NGOs said. The statement was issued by adi- tus foundation, Foundation for Shelter and Support of Migrants, Integra Foundation, Jesuit Refu- gee Service (Malta), KOPIN, Malta Emigrants' Commission, Migrants' Network for Equality, Organisation for Friendship in Diversity, People for Change Foundation, and SOS Malta. "We would like to express our heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of those who tragi- cally lost their lives off the coast of Malta in recent weeks. We also ex- press our solidarity with all those men and women working hard to save lives in the Mediterranean." The NGOs said that with very limited legal and safe ways of enter- ing the European Union and avail- ing themselves of the Common Eu- ropean Asylum System, thousands of refugees are driven to North African shores to embark of life- threatening journeys. "We are concerned that European Union and Member State policies of containment and the over-securiti- zation of external borders seem to have contributed to the prolifera- tion of the unscrupulous smuggling networks that exploit the right to seek asylum and the desperate need to remain alive. "The particularly violent circum- stances of last week's tragedies and the increasing number of deaths are testimony to this." The NGOs said that such human disasters should be better handled, particularly in relation to the treat- ment of corpses and their belong- ings. "Together with civil society organ- isations, the European Union should immediately explore the possibility of setting up a coordinated system for the identification of bodies and archiving of personal belongings in order to bring some dignity to those who lost their lives, and some clo- sure for their loved ones." 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