In March 2020, the National Audit Office found that the process to transfer the site formerly occupied by the Institute for Tourism Studies in Pembroke to the DB Group was mired in administrative failures. The NAO reported10 that the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministry for Tourism gave conflicting reports with regards to the decision to dispose of the land “each assigning responsibility to the other” (7.3.1). It expressed doubts whether the Public Procurement Regulations were observed (7.3.6) and listed a number of serious failures.
Nevertheless, Parliament did not even discuss these findings, let alone attempted to address them. It is worth pointing out that Silvio Debono, chair of the DB Group to whom this land was transferred, had instituted 19 libel cases against Daphne Caruana Galizia for exposing details of the deal and for criticising it. This in spite of a view widely held in the real estate and construction industry was that the price for the transfer of the land was generous to the extent that it could not be explained by any legitimate commercial logic.