In late February 2026, Malta’s Planning Authority voted unanimously, eleven votes in favour, none against, to approve the Corinthia Group’s latest flagship project – the Corinthia Oasis. The development will transform the long-derelict Ħal Ferħ complex in Għajn Tuffieħa into a 161-suite luxury resort, complete with pools, a spa, a restored military chapel, and most controversially, 25 standalone villas and bungalows that can be sold as permanent private residences on protected coastal land. Not a single board member raised an objection at the hearing.
The Corinthia Group is not merely a successful hospitality company. It is, the evidence suggests, a company that has repeatedly benefited from policy decisions, public contracts, and planning outcomes. The Oasis approval is only the most recent example of a pattern that stretches back years and extends well beyond Malta’s shores.
A deal years in the making
The Ħal Ferħ saga began not in 2026 but in 2021, when investigative outlet The Shift News reported that Corinthia had agreed to pay just €1.3 million for the site, which represents a fraction of its estimated €10 million value. It immediately raised questions about potential preferential state aid. The Nationalist Party called for the full sum to be paid upfront, though critics noted the opposition’s own silence in earlier stages of the deal, which undermined its credibility.
Then, in 2022, the Corinthia had flattened the Ħal Ferħ complex before a permit for the residential villas had even been decided. Demolition before permission is, at best, procedurally brazen. Around the same time, a Corinthia-affiliated company was found to have received no fewer than nine direct orders from the construction regulator, a pattern that, applied repeatedly to a single corporate family, demands explanation.
The 25 villas at the heart of the current approval, sit on 30,579 square metres within an Outside Development Zone, land where permanent housing is typically prohibited. A local plan amendment, quietly approved in 2021, created a specific policy exception for high-quality residential units at this location. The Planning Authority approved the amendment and subsequently approved the development that required it. Corinthia will pay €1.3 million to the Lands Authority for the change of use, a sum that will strike anyone as modest for some of Malta’s most spectacular and irreplaceable coastal land.
A cascade of contracts
The Ħal Ferħ story is not an isolated incident. In 2024, a Corinthia-linked company received an €800,000 direct order to begin work on the Gozo airstrip. Another Corinthia company was handed a €365,000 direct order to organise a three-day agricultural fair. A building-sector regulator outsourced its own audit work to a firm connected to both a former minister and the Corinthia Group. In 2023, Malta’s gaming authority spent €25,000 hosting a function at the Corinthia London as part of a PR exercise. Direct orders are not illegal. But their concentration within a single corporate network, across multiple agencies and departments, points to something more structural than coincidence.
Beyond Malta’s borders
Internationally, the picture is no less complicated. Corinthia’s parent company, International Hotel Investments plc, built its early fortune in Gaddafi-era Libya, when most Western businesses were leaving. Libya’s state investment body, LAFICO remains a significant IHI shareholder to this day. When war in Ukraine started in 2022, Corinthia was among the hotel chains that kept their St Petersburg property open as other international brands withdrew. IHI then rushed to repay a €40 million loan to a Russian bank before it fell under EU sanctions. It was an “unplanned” cash drain that, as the company publicly acknowledged, bore heavily on its short-term liquidity. Some can describe these as the unavoidable complexities of operating in emerging markets. Others might call them a preference for proximity to power.
The same question, still unanswered
The group is undoubtedly a genuine employer, a creator of international landmarks and a net contributor to Malta’s economy. The direct orders it has received are not, in themselves, unlawful. And one can most definitely argue that a company of Corinthia’s scale and longevity will inevitably intersect frequently with the state. That is not, on its own, evidence of wrongdoing.
But coincidence has a limit. A land deal at a disputed valuation. A planning policy rewritten around a specific project. Demolition before permits. A cascade of direct-order contracts across unrelated agencies. The Planning Authority’s approval projects disregarding public objections. Taken together, these facts describe a company that moves through Malta’s regulatory environment with an ease available to very few. The Planning Authority’s latest vote only sharpens the question that has been building for years.
