Maria Isabella Camilleri has asked the Civil Court to declare null and void a management agreement she had entered into with VAB Company Limited to run the Jumbo Lido at Qui-Si-Sana.
Lawyer Peter Fenech, the politically appointed chairman of the Malta Conference Centre and Manoel Theatre and a well known political canvasser to Minister Louis Galea, is one of the two directors of VAB Company Limited. His father Frank is the other director and the main shareholder of the company.
Fenech is currently suing MaltaToday for libel, after the newspaper revealed that the company, whose Lm109,965 rent bill was waived by the government because it lacked the assets from where to pay its dues, was claiming Lm138,385 in rents, legal fees and interest from Camilleri, who had signed a management agreement for the operation of a kebab house at the Jumbo Lido on the Tigné seafront in 1997.
MaltaToday also revealed that the Lands Department had no knowledge of VAB’s management agreement with a third party when it waived VAB’s outstanding rent bill.
“The Land Department never had any knowledge of the Management Agreement,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Home Affairs had told MaltaToday.
The original contract signed between government and VAB in May 1989 stated that the “emphyteuta shall not transfer or otherwise grant on lease the emphyteutical site, without first obtaining the written consent to be granted or withheld at the discretion of the government.”
Camilleri is now calling on the courts to declare the management agreement null and void.
In May 1997, VAB had granted her the administration of the lido by means of a management agreement. VAB managed to pocket Lm40,000 from the new manager at the Jumbo Lido just two days before depositing their last-ever rent to the Lands Department, an Lm18,000 instalment, on 26 May 1997.
But financial difficulties and a devastating storm that rocked the Sliema seafront led to the closure of the Jumbo Lido, after which VAB took the case in court to recoup Lm80,000 in management fees owed to them between 1999 and 2003.
On 28 February 2000, Camilleri was ordered by court to pay VAB Lm23,000 with interest, and again on 1 March 2002 to pay Lm20,000 with interest in outstanding management fees.
However, in her court application Camilleri said she had subsequently discovered that the company was precluded from transferring the lido to third parties except with the consent of the Commissioner of Land.
She submitted that the management agreement was in reality a contract of lease and VAB had tried to exonerate itself from its obligations vis-a-vis the Commissioner of Land.
The company, she claims, had not obtained the consent of the Commissioner of Land prior to entering into the agreement with her in 1997.
Camilleri called upon the court to declare that the management agreement was, in reality, a contract of lease and to declare that VAB had not been entitled to enter into such an agreement with her.
She also asked the court to declare the management agreement null and void and to order VAB to reimburse her all the management fees she had paid them since May 1997.