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MT 8 APR 2018

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maltatoday SUNDAY 8 APRIL 2018 4 News CONTINUED FORM PAGE 1 In the appeal submitted by law- yer Keith Bonnici, Gaffarena says the judgment was null as it was given against an authority which no longer existed by the time the judgment was issued. In fact, the Commissioner of Lands was replaced by the Lands Authority in April 2017. Gaffarena is claiming that the Commissioner for Lands was re- placed by the Lands Authority, which, however, never requested to be a legitimate respondent to the case after the changeover. Indeed, the court referred to the Commissioner for Lands dur- ing the proceedings till the very end, with the judgment calling on that entity to appear on the deed revoking the contracts. Gaffarena contends that since the new entity did not step in to take the Commissioner's legal place, the judgment cannot be executed and is therefore null. "The appellants submit that this illegitimacy cannot be rem- edied today," his lawyer said in the appeal. Another ground for Gaffarena's appeal was that the request for revocation was filed by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat against the Commissioner of Lands, whose department was the legal responsibility of the parliamen- tary secretariat for lands – the same Joseph Muscat. Muscat had assumed political responsibility for the ministry af- ter the resignation of Falzon. "It is clear that Muscat is at the same time the plaintiff as well as the minister burdened with the legal responsibility for two of the defendants – the Commissioner for Lands and the Registrar of Lands. It is therefore against the concept of public order that there is a case in Court where both the applicant and the defendant are the same person who has legal responsibility for the alleged il- legal actions," Gaffarena said in his appeal. Other grounds Gaffarena is also arguing that the law was misquoted over the distinction between "common undivided" ownership and "com- mon divided" ownership, namely as to whether the expropriation had to be benefit all owners when the section of the law cited reads "the owner". He said it was not true that the presidential declaration order- ing the expropriation referred to "an undivided quarter of all the shares in the property" but to the undivided quarter of the Old Mint Street property. "The declarations make no ref- erence to physical persons. Here we are talking about buildings and nothing else," the lawyers submitted. The reasoning that the ex- change of property has to take place with all the co-owners be- ing entitled to compensation for their part of an undivided quarter expropriated by the government was "based on a legal principle that doesn't exist" and the con- clusion was "mistaken on many levels", Keith Bonnici argued. PwC report 'not up to standard' Bonnici also attacked a tech- nical report by auditors Price- waterhouseCoopers, who were commissioned by the IAID, say- ing the court "completely ig- nored" the testimony of the ar- chitect who drew up the report, who said the Gaffarenas failed to produce a valuation of their own to discredit that submitted by PwC. The Gaffarenas had no legal re- quirement to present a new valu- ation but they only had to show that the report by PwC was not carried out according to indus- try standards. Bonnici argued that once the PwC report had been discredited, and that the government had not attempted to discredit the valuations of the Old Mint Street property and those of the compensatory lands in Handaq, Zebbug, Sliema and Mqabba, Gaffarena had no rea- son to produce another valua- tion. "Government had every oppor- tunity to request the nomination of a new technical expert but had instead rested solely on the PwC report, arguing that the other party had gone a step further and 'made it (architects Joseph H. Spiteri and Stefan Scotto's valu- ation) its own." The lawyer said that the ar- chitect on PwC's independent property valuation had testified "clearly and unequivocally that he had not presented a technical report to PwC", suggesting that the report was not made accord- ing to the technical standards required, and therefore had no weight. He also said the architect failed to visit the properties in ques- tion, did not sign the PwC report and that he valued a number of properties as irrigated land when they were in fact non-irrigated. "The fact that the report had been drawn up by PwC means nothing if it doesn't satisfy the requirements established by the Chamber of Architects." magius@mediatoday.com.mt MATTHEW VELLA A 'mobile phone' bank in Malta has been fined €188,445 by the financial regulator over several banking breaches. The Malta Financial Services Authority said that between 18 July 2016 and 8 August 2016, Finnish-owned bank Ferratum, a subsidiary of Ferratum Oyj, had breached various provisions of the Banking Act and the techni- cal criteria on governance ar- rangements and treatment of risks under the Banking Act. The bank may appeal the de- cision of the Authority before the Financial Services Tribunal within 30 days from the date of notification. Ferratum Group is an interna- tional provider of mobile banking and digital consumer and small business loans, distributed and managed by mobile devices. Founded in 2005 in the Finnish capital of Helsinki, the bank now operates in 25 countries across Europe, Africa, South and North America and the Asia-Pacific re- gion. Ferratum's mobile bank, launched in 2016, is an innova- tive mobile banking platform of- fering real-time digital payments and transfers, within a single app. It has approximately 1.9 million active and former customers who have an account or have been granted one or more loans in the past. In 2017, it generated €221.6 million in revenues and an oper- ating profit of €32.2 million. The bank was licensed in 2012 to set up a Malta base to enter the European market. Tonio Fenech, who as finance minister addressed the bank's launch conference, later became a director of the bank after leav- ing government following the 2013 election. Another director of the Malta company is former Bank of Valletta CEO Charles Borg. MFSA slaps €188,000 fine on Maltese 'mobile phone bank' Marco Gaffarena photographed in Valletta: the businessman's controversial expropriation deal with the Lands Department had led to the resignation of Michael Falzon from parliamentary secretary for lands, and now, the courts' revocation of the deal Gaffarena says new lands regulator not legitimate respondent

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