Fortina Investments has issued a right of reply following a Lovin Malta article regarding last year’s open-top bus tragedy and Transport Malta’s decision to contest any sort of liability in the incident.

The statement goes as follows:

Fortina Investments takes the strongest possible exception to the article written by Julian Bonnici and published by LovinMalta on 6 November, entitled ‘Open-Top Bus Tragedy: Transport Malta Will Fight Tooth And Nail Against Compensating Victims and Heirs’, which is littered with factual inaccuracies and makes a clear attempt to smear the Group.

Several assertions made in the article are incorrect:

1. The article states “the bus formed part of the popular City Sightseeing service heading (sic) by the Fortel Group, the company behind the Fortina Hotel.” Fortina Investments (referred to in the article as the Fortel Group) does not head this service. It is an investor via its subsidiary Island Sightseeing Ltd (ISS) and has no operational duties or directors in this company.

2. The journalist, who made no attempt to contact Fortina Group to ascertain the true facts, also sickeningly attempts to convey the impression that the Company is somehow dragging its feet on the issue of compensation to the victims of this terrible accident and their heirs. Even though the Company, as explained above, is not involved in the operations of City Sightseeing, it was horrified by the incident and has every sympathy with the victims. Furthermore, it is clear that a magisterial inquiry is underway and that relevant claims have been lodged with insurance companies which obviously take time to be resolved.

3. The article further states that “the City Sightseeing parent company, who (sic) also owns Captain Morgan, has recently launched a bid to now have a similar hop-on-hop-off maritime service, applying for a jetty in the public domain”. This is a total fabrication. City Sightseeing does not have a parent company. Captain Morgan owns ISS which in turn owns 50 per cent of shares in City Sightseeing without having any involvement in the said company’s operations.

4. The article states that “Fortina has already announced a €20 million investment into the concept at an event attended by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, despite the tender for the service (which formed part of this year’s budget) yet to be issued.” Yet again, this is a total fabrication. Fortina took the decision to make a €20 million investment in new vessels over two years ago, long before any mention of tenders for public transport by sea. Furthermore, the Company took this decision in pursuit of its vision to upgrade and diversify its Captain Morgan brand in line with global trends.

By tying all these issues together, it appears that the object of the article is to smear Fortina Investments with fallacies and innuendo rather with complete disregard for the facts. It is extremely disappointing that a media outlet should act in this manner.

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