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MaltaToday has been served with libel actions in a bid to prevent this newspaper from bringing to light the way families and young couples were sold property in Ta’ l-Ibragg. The sale was made on the false premise that the land on which they stood would be theirs, with a legal surety that guarantees buyers the land they purchase is theirs’ and has no other competing claims to ownership. This is known as the pacifiku pussess in Maltese notarial jargon.
The libel actions were presented filed by legal representatives Dr Tonio Azzopardi and Dr Henry Antoncic. Labour candidate Dr Zammit Lewis and Dr Joseph Giglio have also threatened that one of their clients will sue.
MaltaToday is citing its right to report the true facts and its privilege to report court proceedings and is promising its readers to continue to uncover the truth. MaltaToday’s Managing Editor described the legal advice and legal action proposed by the lawyers as vexatious and he added that MaltaToday would not be gagged by these court proceedings. He added: “To fight these libel cases, preliminary court fees alone would add up to over Lm700. But this is not the first time that attempts have been made to silence MaltaToday.”
Reactions to last week’s report by MaltaToday were met by a vexatious attack on the privilege of this newspaper to report court proceedings involving Raymond Aquilina, the director of Terra Mediterranea, in connection with charges of wrongful trading after having sold property on land which was government-owned, known as l-Ghalqa ta’ Giakondu at Triq Wied Mejxu in Ta’ l-Ibragg.
MaltaToday has been served with libel actions in a bid to prevent this newspaper from bringing to light the way families and young couples were sold property in Ta’ l-Ibragg on the false premise that the land on which they stood would be theirs, with the guarantee of the pacifiku pussess – the legal surety that guarantees buyers the land they purchase is theirs’ and has no other competing claims to ownership.
In another reaction to the report, Notary Victor J Bisazza, President of the Notarial College, wrote to MaltaToday (see page 20) stating that the Ecclesiastical Entities (Properties) Act of 1992, the law concerning land transferred from the Church to the Maltese government, was unfair in respect of private transfers of land on areas which unknowingly had been listed in the ‘Annex 8’, the list of Church land transferred to the state, opening up another viewpoint on last week’s report.
Government confirms
The Home Affairs Ministry has confirmed with this newspaper that according to documents in possession of the Government Property Division, l-Ghalqa ta’ Giakondu is government property that was transferred by the ecclesiastical authorities, and has now been registered in the name of the Government of Malta.
Spokesperson Joe Azzopardi said a pending lawsuit on the matter, in reference to action taken by the Lands Department with regards to Terra Mediterranea, is still sub judice.
Last week MaltaToday reported how Terra Mediterranea had sold property on land that had been government-owned with the guarantee of the pacifiku pussess, when in fact, the land in question never carried the pacifiku pussess.
The area in question was part of a larger tract of land allegedly bequeathed in an inheritance purchased by Spiteri Holdings, whose director is Domenico Savio Spiteri, for the price of Lm7,000 in August 1996.
The inheritance was of siblings Paolo and Teresa Xuereb, awarded to an executor of wills in 1826, and thereon passed down to other executors. Fr Renato Valente, the last executor, was nominated to substitute the previous executor Fr Rafel Gauci.
According to notarial searches seen by MaltaToday, Fr Valente chose to sell the inheritance to Domenico Savio Spiteri’s company, Spiteri Holdings. Spiteri had been a former business partner of his.
In comments given to MaltaToday, Valente said it was a court expert appointed by the Second Hall of the Civil Court to have stated that the inheritance, with all the complications involved in asserting who had rightful ownership of the land at Ta’ l-Ibragg, was only worth Lm7,000: “I was only interested in getting rid of this responsibility and sold it according to the value given by the court expert to a person I knew would have taken it, with rights, obligations, risks and all.”
As the searches confirm, the land was purchased by Spiteri Holdings without the guarantee of the pacifiku pussess. A month later, Spiteri Holdings sold seven tumoli of that land to Trading Enterprises for Lm130,000.
Between 1996 and 2003, Spiteri Holdings sold plots of the land claimed from the sale of the Xuereb inheritance to companies such as Madliena Developments and Terra Mediterranea, owned by Raymond Aquilina; Commerical Trading Corporation, owned by Spiteri himself, and other buyers.
Notarial searches confirm these land transfers occurred without the guarantee of the pacifiku pussess. According to submissions by lawyers representing injured parties in the legal charges brought against Raymond Aquilina, as director of Terra Mediterranea, Spiteri allegedly managed to sell the land for nearly Lm1,000,000 between 1996 and 2003.
Terra Mediterranea built maisonettes on Triq Wied Mejxu in the area known as l-Ghalqa ta’ Giakondu which it had purchased from Spiteri Holdings, but instead sold these properties with the guarantee of the pacifiku pussess.
In 2003, the families living in the property purchased from Terra Mediterranea realised the land they stood on had been registered in the name of the Maltese government after having been transferred from the Church property list.
Injured parties speaking to MaltaToday claim their notaries had depended on previous notaries’ searches to confirm that everything was ‘in order.’ The HSBC bank had loaned Terra Mediterranea Lm97,000, covered by a general hypothec, on the land at Triq Wied Mejxu – a guarantee which could have informed the reason why notaries could have felt secure that everything was in order.
Additionally, the land in question was only revealed to have been transferred from the Church to the state in 2003, when it was registered by the Joint Office.
A legal conundrum
According to Notary Victor J Bisazza, such a case could be related to what he claims is a defective law “verging on the unconstitutional,” namely the Ecclesiastical Entities (Properties) Act of 1992.
According to the Church-State agreement of 1992, land listed in the register known as ‘Annex 8’ is Church property which is to be transferred to the state. Every year since 1992, the laborious effort has enabled the registration of ‘just’ 30 per cent of this land.
In the case of Triq Wied Mejxu, the land in question had not yet been registered back in 1996 when Spiteri Holdings purchased it from the Xuereb siblings’ inheritance.
“Since the land had not been registered, there is no obligation for that transfer of ownership to be registered. Additionally, since the land is not registered, it is hard to trace the owners of that land.
“That could be the reason why Spiteri Holdings did not give the normal warranty as the original deeds were never found. In the case of inheritances you have to search ancestors to get to the title but there is a practical limit since public registry indexing goes as far back as 1857. It is a notary’s practice to search for a deed but in some cases this cannot be found and the purchaser takes the risk, which in most cases is no risk at all because the law provides the solution in acquisitive prescription.”
Acquisitive prescription means the Xuereb siblings could have acquired the property after having lived on it for over 40 years, legally becoming the owners of that land.
“What is important is that from different sources like rent books and notices, you prove that the Xuereb siblings and their ancestor possessed the property uninterruptedly for forty years. If this is so it is of no importance that the property was once of an ecclesiastical entity. It was through its inactivity that it lost the property and the family Xuereb acquired it period.”
However, Bisazza said that any land listed in Annex 8 can be registered in the name of the government and according to the Ecclesiastical Entities (Properties) Act, the land is registered retroactively, that is, it is considered to have been government property since 1992:
“The problem is that the Joint Office does not need any documentation to back the registration claim. As long as it has been listed in Annex 8, rightfully or wrongfully, the land is registered in the government’s name, but the Land Registry is powerless to remove it in case the title was wrongly registered. How’s that for equity and justice?
“Without knowing, property bought in 1995 with all warranties and perfect searches going down to an inheritance in 1956, ends up being registered by the Joint Office in 1999 through its famous ‘Annex 8,’ the Church register where all church property transferred to the Government is listed. When you try to sell this property, you discover it is no longer yours because it has been registered without your knowledge in 1999 by the Joint Office. Unless it is proved that this property had been possessed by your ancestors for 40 years, in which case the property becomes theirs because it was lost through the inactivity of the ecclesiastical entity who never made a claim on the property, a Notary states the property has been owned by an ecclesiastical entity “ab immemorabile” which means ‘we have no records of how and when it passed to the Church’.”
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