Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/592425
www.maltatoday.com.mt wednesday edition wednesday • 28 OctOber 2015 • issue 440 • published every wednesday and sunday €1.00 Newspaper post PAGE 5 Gaffarena refused money for car acquired by Joe Cassar Joe Gaffarena told former PN minister to donate money to Nationalist Party instead of paying him JurGEN BAlzAN Businessman Joe Gaf- farena refused to be paid for a car acquired by nationalist mP Joe Cassar and asked the then Cabinet minister to donate the money to the nationalist Party, maltaToday can reveal. asked to clarif y the matter, Cassar told maltaToday that the vehicle in question was not a gift " because i paid for it." The deal took place in 2012, in the turbu- lent months which led to the de- mise of the nationalist govern- ment, in which Cassar served as health minister. "This was an 11-year old sec- ondhand car which my family bought for my daughter when she turned 18," Cassar said. He added that "mr Gaffarena, who was a family acquaintance, refused the money and asked to donate them to Pn. a receipt for the money i paid was issued." The mP added that despite his acquaintance with Gaffarena, "at no point did i ever give him any- thing untoward, not a licence for his petrol station and certainly not a multi-million compensa- tion for half a property in Val- letta. This is something that Joseph muscat and michael Fal- zon must answer for." a Pn spokesperson told mal- taToday that Cassar would be providing the newspaper with a copy of the receipt by Wednes- day morning since he did not have access to the document at the time of going to print. earlier on Tuesday, while an- swering questions during a Pn press conference a visibly un- comfortable Cassar refused to elaborate on his links with the Gaffarena family saying that he had a libel case and he would be declaring under oath how he knew the Joe Gaffarena. side-stepping a direct question on whether he accepted any do- nations from Gaffarena, Cassar said "the question you should be asking is not what i received from Gaffarena but what he re- ceived in return and it is clear that he received a lot from this government." Pressed to say what sort of do- nations he received, Cassar said, "this is not the appropriate fo- rum". His answers came in reply to questions over mPs' association with Gaffarena, after maltaTo- day broke news on sunday that an iaiD inquiry had found land values for the expropriation of a property owned by Joe Gaffare- na's son, marco, by the Govern- ment Property Department had been "illegal ". in the early nineties Joe Gaf- farena, was involved in a con- troversy over the location of the Daewoo car showroom in Qormi, which was originally built with- out a planning permit, as was its car storage at Hal Farrug. Joe Cassar said he paid an unspecified amount of money to the PN for a secondhand car he acquired from entrepreneur Joe Gaffarena Residency requirement does not need 'physical presence' of IIP applicants FULL STORY • PAGE 3