News | Sunday, 21 June 2009

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The men who sold Victor Scerri his land

Eliza Company owners were charged with art theft and tried to evict farmers from land

David Darmanin
Matthew Vella
PN president Victor Scerri has confirmed that he bought his land in Bahrija from a company owned by two men, who in 1999 were charged with the theft of 15 paintings from Villa Fiorentina in Attard.
Scerri applied for a MEPA permit for his land soon after in 2000.
Norman Zammit, 56, a former Metco chairman, and Generoso Sammut, 55, were accused of stealing paintings, furniture and other items from Villa Fiorentina in Attard. They were later acquitted of the theft due to “lack of evidence”.
They are two of the nine shareholders in Eliza Company Ltd, which purchased the land in Bahrija for €2.5 million from Salvatore Consoli-Palermo-Navarra.
However, Zammit has been ordered by a court to pay back Bank of Valletta a €1.9 million loan taken out to buy the land.
Scerri confirmed with MaltaToday that he purchased the land from Eliza. “Yes... I think so, but it was a while ago and I have to check.”
When asked about the involvement of Norman Zammit in the sale of the land, Scerri replied: “Yes, as far as I know, he is one of the shareholders.”

When police charged Zammit and Sammut with the Villa Fiorentina art theft, Sammut was already serving a suspended jail term.
A tip-off to the police had led to the recovery of the stolen paintings in a factory in Commerce Street, in Qormi, where Sammut was seen going inside with a camera and a tripod. Sammut was apprehended on leaving the factory.
Then assistant commissioner John Rizzo, who was leading the operation, found Norman Zammit in the factory. There they found 14 paintings locked inside a factory room.
Police inspector Pierre Calleja had also told the court that Zammit released a four-page statement in which he admitted his involvement, but that Sammut had refused to reply to questions put to him by the police.
Development works on Victor Scerri’s Bahrija property have now been stopped, pending police and MEPA investigations into the award of the permit.
The development was exposed by the Labour Party shortly before the June 6 European Parliament elections.
Eliza Company is at the heart of a fierce land tussle to evict farmers from their land. The area, known as il-Qortin and overlooking the bay at Fomm ir-Rih, is a green area and development there is prohibited.
However this has not stopped the firm from marketing the sale of the 1.5 million square metres for €30 million on the internet with claims that permits were available for “the development of fish farms, Disneyland-styled theme parks, golf courses of international standards and a five-star hotel.”
The website had gone offline soon after MaltaToday reported these claims.
Generoso Sammut has also been found guilty of threatening Labour MP Anglu Farrugia over the phone. Farrugia was the lawyer representing a group of Bidnija farmers.
Another of the Bahrija farmers’ lawyers, Toni Abela, had also presented a verbal report to the court claiming that Sammut had threatened to kill him in the law courts.
Sammut has also been charged with forgery, along with notary Anthony Agius, a former PN candidate from Qormi, for using false signatures in public acts.
Sammut had also attempted to defraud his own sister of their aunt’s inheritance by fabricating a ‘secret will’, claiming he was the sole heir of his aunt’s wealth. Police investigations revealed that Concetta Sammut’s signature on the secret will had not been genuine, and that the will was not authentic.

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