Fortina Land Scandal: Police Set to Decide Future of Sliema Shoreline at Heart of Malta’s Latest Development Storm

Watch: Police to decide on ‘way forward’ on Fortina land scandal
By Hot Malta Staff

Sliema’s seafront promenade has always been a stage for Maltese summer theatre: kids cannon-balling off the rocks, pensioners arguing over ħobż-bi-żejt recipes, and, this week, a small but determined cluster of residents clutching cardboard signs that read “Hands Off Our Shoreline.” Their protest is the latest act in the long-running Fortina land scandal, a saga that stitches together prime coastal real estate, an alleged 2008 concession swap and a whiff of political deja-vu that no amount of sea breeze can dispel.

On Tuesday, police commissioner Angelo Gafà told reporters that the Economic Crimes Unit had finished “combing through” a 600-page magisterial inquiry and will “shortly decide on the way forward”. The file centres on whether a former tourism minister bent the rules when he quietly transferred a 99-year emphyteusis on 4,000 m² of public land beneath the five-star Fortina Hotel to its developers. In exchange, the company reportedly handed over a nearby parcel already zoned for tourism. Critics say the swap short-changed the public by privatising one of the last open stretches of the Tigné peninsula, gifting unobstructed views to high-end investors and, potentially, a fresh crop of luxury apartments.

For Maltese accustomed to watching cranes dominate the horizon, the Fortina case is more than a planning spat; it is a referendum on who gets to write the coastline’s next chapter. Sliema—once a sleepy fishing village whose name derives from sliem, the Arabic word for peace—has morphed into the island’s densest municipality, its art-nouveau villas replaced by glass blocks that rent at €3,000 a month. The thought of losing another finger of rocky foreshore feels, to many, like scraping the bottom of an already empty fish crate.

“Every time we give away a corner, we lose a memory,” says 68-year-old Marisa Camilleri, who learned to swim off the same ladders her grandchildren now use. “My father kept his luzzu tied here during the war. Today they want jacuzzis.”

The cultural stakes are high. Urban planner and activist Sasha Apap Bologna argues that the Fortina footprint includes a 17th-century coastal battery later absorbed into British military gardens. “Heritage isn’t just knights’ auberges,” she notes. “It’s also the intangible layering of working-class seaside life—ġbejnġ seller carts, the feast-day procession that once started from these very slipways.” Erasing that fabric, she warns, chips away at the plural identity Malta sells to millions of tourists.

Economically, the timing is awkward. Malta is under EU pressure to prove its anti-money-laundering credentials before an upcoming FATF review. Any hint of impunity in high-profile land deals could colour Brussels’ assessment and rattle the foreign investors who prop up 27 % of GDP. Finance Minister Clyde Caruana has promised “zero tolerance”, yet the same Fortina investors bankrolled last year’s Valletta waterfront New Year’s concert, a staple of government branding. The optics—confetti one season, court summons the next—feed the cynicism that already saw voter turnout plummet to 85 % in the last election, historically low by Maltese standards.

Community reaction has been swift. A 30-second TikTok by local teacher Luke Pace comparing the concession to “stealing sand from your own sandbox” racked up 250,000 views in 48 hours. NGOs have scheduled a kayak flotilla for Saturday, paddling from Balluta Bay to the Fortina jetty in symbolic defence of the public domain. Even the hotel workers’ union voiced “concern”, fearing reputational damage could threaten 300 jobs if brand boycotts spread.

The police dilemma is unenviable. Charge ex-ministers and they risk alienating party donors; shelve the case and they undermine the “institutional reboot” promised after Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination. Sources say the inquiry includes WhatsApp chats and a 2007 Cabinet minute that never reached Parliament’s land committee. Whether that is enough for indictments remains to be seen. What is certain is that Sliema residents are trading sun-lounger gossip for constitutional articles, armed with highlighters and a newfound fluency in the Land Acquisition Act.

As the commissioner weighs his options, the limestone rocks below Fortina keep soaking up the tide, indifferent to human tenure. Yet every Maltese child knows that the sea always wins in the end; it is the landlords above who remain on probation. When the police finally speak, their words will either reinforce the lesson that our shores are a commons, or confirm the whisper that every bay has its price. For a country marketing itself as an open-air museum, the next exhibit could be justice itself.