Mellieħa Mayor Gabriel Micallef has published the tender document for the sale of the “Taż-Żnuber” area, which was sold for €151,212

Yesterday, Mellieħa Mayor Gabriel Micallef published the tender document which sold the plot of land in Mellieħa called “Znuber”.

The “Żnuber” area in Mellieħa, which hosts a few Żnuber trees and is set to be developed by contractor Roderick Conti with Gabriel Bartolo as the architect (the brother of the Minister of Tourism), was sold by the Lands Department for a mere €151,000. The original minimum asking price was just €89,000. The land will host a mega-development of up to 30 apartments, shops and garages.

What is interesting, yet strange, is that other big contractors bid for the plot of land with small offers, such as Tumas Group that placed a bid for just around €141,000. It’s as if the other contractors didn’t want to win the bidding war and placed bids only to low-ball the tender.

Someone with the resources like Tumas Group could have placed a very aggressive if they actually intended to take over the land, but this does not seem to have been their original intention.

This is also not the first time that the government sold a piece of land in Mellieħa at an excessively cheap rate to a local contractor.