Elbros and Tal-Magħtab Construction behind Marfa Palace redevelopment bid

After more than two weeks of being pressed, the Lands Authority has coughed up the names of the people behind a bid to re-develop the Marfa Palace into a boutique hotel.

The three people behind the joint expression of interest in the project are Dennis Baldacchino of Tal-Magħtab, Charles Ellul of Elbros Construction Ltd and a certain Clifton Borg. However, the name of the joint venture, Exclusivity Malta, is still not even a registered company.

Lands Authority CEO Carlo Mifsud explained to this newspaper how the process had begun back in 2013. He added that, following the submission of the expression of interest, it will undergo the administrative process at the Lands Authority and if the process has a positive result, it will be presented for a Parliamentary resolution.

The Marfa Palace sits practically right on the doorstep of the hotel owned by Elbros and Tal-Magħtab construction rival Charles Polidano (ic-Caqnu), the Riviera Hotel.

Exclusivity Malta Ltd, the company the three are said to have formed to bid for the redevelopment of Marfa Palace, still does not exist on the Malta Financial Services Authority’s Registry of Companies.

After attempting to carry out numerous searches into the company over the last two weeks through various sources and other publicly available information, this newsroom observed that there was no trace of the company – it being noticeably absent on the MFSA registry, despite regulations clearly stipulating that all commercial partnerships, including companies, are to be registered on the Registry, irrespective of what type of activities they carry out.

This raised serious questions as to whether the company actually existed, and how it could even be possible for a company to enter into a tendering process without being officially registered with the MFSA.

This newsroom decided to approach The Ministry for Transport, Infrastructure and Planning to query this discrepancy and was directed to the Lands Authority, which is overseeing the bid.

The company was announced as the preferred bidders in April 2015 by Minister Michael Falzon, who at the time was Parliamentary Secretary for Planning, after an initial expression of interest, which yielded six applicants, was issued in October 2013.

Last month, Planning Minister Ian Borg said that negotiations over the project were in their final stages and the proposal was now being passed to the Board of Governors of the Lands Authority, echoing a similar answer he had provided in November, when he said that the valuation of the property was taking place in order to be passed on to the same Board of Governors.

The palace was built on the remains of a coastal redoubt and battery dating back to the time of the Knights of St John and had actually served as a hotel in the first half of the last century. It also served as a summer residence for the St Joseph Home of Santa Venera, and as a police station, but has been unused and neglected in recent years.