Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/806571
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 APRIL 2017 8 News Businessman co-operative Tuna ranchers lose bid against €220,000 tax JURGEN BALZAN A company which has been ordered by a court of law to evict a Marsax- lokk premises where it invested some €1.5 million in, is calling on Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to investigate why the Lands Depart- ment did not move to evict the fish- ing co-operative which sub-let the premises illegally in the first place. Angelic Mifsud's company – Lambusa Maritime Company Lim- ited – has been ordered to vacate the premises it was sub-leasing from the Ghaqda Koperattiva tas- Sajd, which was itself served with an eviction notice in 2015 by the Lands Department. Mifsud, who lost his case against the fishing coop, is planning to take the matter to a higher court. "Why has the co-operative not been evict- ed from a building they no longer have a title on? Why did the Lands Department not enforce its deci- sion to evict the co-operative, while I will be duly obeying the court order tomorrow Monday? If any- thing both of us should be evicted," Mifsud told MaltaToday. The Prime Minister is yet to an- swer the four letters Mifsud sent over the past few weeks, and in comments to MaltaToday the ag- grieved Mifsud said the eviction will bring serious repercussions up- on his business, which has already been stalled for four years. An appeals court recently upheld the decision to evict Lambusa Mar- itime Company Limited after be- ing found guilty of not honouring its contractual obligations with the coop, which sub-leased the prem- ises to him. "Why am I being evicted from a building which the co-operative had no right to sub-let in the first place? After all I have paid my dues and settled all the payments," Mifsud said. "The ambiguity has confused me. Who should I believe and trust? The lands department or the courts?" The co-op is in fact still making use of the building, despite having been ordered to vacate the premis- es by the Government Property Di- vision, is now known as the Lands Authority. Co-op's eviction ignored In June 2015, the co-operative was informed by the GPD that its lease would not be renewed, and was giv- en up to the end of December 2015 to vacate the building. The GPD ordered the eviction be- cause the 1982 agreement between the government and the co-op pro- hibits sub-letting of the premises. But this was breached more than once. The GPD's Lands Department had investigated at least three instances when the co-op illegally sub-let the premises. Over the years, part of the premises for which the co-op pays just €700 in annual rent, was used as a fish shop, an insurance broker office, and more recently as a fish packaging and storage facility run by Lambusa Maritime – who paid €36,000 a year for the sub-lease. After the eviction order, Mifsud stopped paying the sub-lease. The co-op is however still us- ing the building, because the GPD never enforced the eviction. "This is completely unfair as from tomor- row, the co-operative – which has completely ignored the eviction by the Lands Department – can make use of my company's freezing and packaging equipment," Mifsud said. Additionally, in various court cases involving the co-operative and Lambusa, the GPD's witnesses in court made it clear that the lease had been terminated and that the department wanted the return of the keys. "The co-operative has no title on the building, however it has pre- sented invoices showing that it paid its lease for 2017. This makes no sense. Why should anyone pay a lease which has not been renewed?" Mifsud asked. It turns out that the Lands Au- thority is investigating whether the invoices – presented in court by the co-op – pertain to rents paid for an- other building. Indeed, the invoices seen by Mal- taToday are addressed to Koperat- tiva tas-Sajd Ltd, Dar is-Sajjieda, Xatt is-Sajjieda, Marsaxlokk, which is the address of a separate co-oper- ative which has a title over a struc- ture at the other end of the Marsax- lokk seafront. "Naturally, the question is how did the co-operative get hold of in- voices which do not belong to it and why did it present them in court…" Mifsud contended. Letter to Prime Minister In his letter to the prime minis- ter, Mifsud explains that after the Lands Department declared in court that the lease had been ter- minated in 2015, the co-operative insisted that this was untrue and insisted they had paid the lease up until the year 2017. MATTHEW AGIUS A tuna fish breeding company's objection to having to pay nearly €220,000 under retroactive tax imposed on its past catches has been dismissed by a court because it was filed too late and under the wrong law. In April 2016, Fish and Fish Co. Ltd had filed judicial proceedings against the Minister for Sustain- able Development and Climate Change, and the Director General of the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture objecting to the latter's request, made in October 2015, that it pay €219,942.10 in retrospective taxes on tuna catch- es. The tax was introduced in 2015, levying €230 on every ton of tuna caught since May 2015. The company had paid under protest, having been particularly riled by an article in the legal no- tice which, it said, stated that the department would withdraw es- sential services to non-paying companies. It also filed a judicial letter in April 2016 asking for the amount to be refunded, arguing that the regulation was not within the scope of the powers granted by the Fisheries Conservation and Man- agement Act, because it had not been issued by the Minister. "This was not a fee, but a tax," the company argued, saying it was a well-established legal principle that new taxes cannot be retroac- tive in scope. Legal representatives of the de- fendant minister and department had counter-argued that the plain- tiffs had filed their action too late. In a decision handed down on Wednesday, the First Hall of the Civil Court presided by Judge Mark Chetcuti noted that the plaintiffs were challenging the power of the minister to issue the particular legal notice on the grounds that it was beyond the scope of his powers, also claiming that the legal notice itself was is- sued in this way. The court disagreed with the plaintiff's argument that the pro- cedural rule of giving advance no- tice to government violated any of its rights, saying the failure by the company to abide by the rules of procedure could not be used as an excuse for its actions. Furthermore, the request was made after the lapse of the 6 month period envisaged for judi- cial review specified by the article under which it had been filed. The case was dismissed, with costs, against the plaintiffs. A fisheries company is being evicted from what turned out to be an illegal sub-lease, yet the cooperative that rented out the place in the first place has not yet been kicked out despite an order by the Lands Department in 2015