Wardija lawyer does it again

Italian businessman Luigi Ritano is a director of Dolphin Film Productions Limited, a company he runs together with the 37-year-old flamboyant lawyer Patrick Spiteri from Wardija.

Their company has made lucrative deals with foreign film companies and till recently, the company was involved with the Julius Caesar film production. Until, that is, Luigi Ritano turned up at a Bank with Lm40,000 in cash. This prompted the cashier to inform his bank manager that someone was at the counter with a large amount of cash.

The conscientious manager politely asked Ritano about the origin of the money, and Ritano answered that it was from the Julius Caesar film.

To confirm that this was the case, the bank phoned the production manager at the Julius Caesar set. The production manager replied that he knew of no such money and fearful that this could involve an undeclared commission related to the film, he promptly informed his superiors of the situation.

What happened next is not very clear. But what is certain is that Luigi Ritano’s Lm40,000 had nothing to do with the Julius Caesar film. And the working relationship between the company owned by Mr Ritano and Dr Spiteri and the film company producing Julius Caesar was terminated soon after.

Patrick Spiteri has been known to ‘advise’ on the investment of funds. But the charming lawyer has run into serious trouble over allegations of fraud.

A case in point is the serious accusation of misappropriation of funds levelled against Patrick Spiteri.

In a recent and still pending court case, British national Ronald Phillips is seeking the whereabouts of some £500,000 he invested with Muscat Azzopardi Spiteri and Associates (MASA), partly owned by Spiteri. According to Spiteri’s testimony, British national Paul Warren had approached MASA.

One joint shareholder with Spiteri in CMG International was Stuart Creggy, currently facing charges in the US for $17 million in money laundering, who, during the second half of 1998, took over the administration of accounts held by a Liberian financial institution – Carlton Fiduciare.

One of these accounts had belonged to Phillips.

Creggy and Warren were at the time being investigated in six countries on charges of money laundering. Warren was being investigated by the National Crime Squad in the UK and Creggy was under the police’s watchful eye in both the US and UK.

Spiteri explained in court how Phillip’s funds had originally been transferred to a Liberian account by the name of Carlton Fiduciare from Eton Trust in the UK. The latter was later involved in money laundering allegations. The former, being registered in Liberia, falls under immediate suspicion as Liberian financial institutions are commonly used to side-step financial regulations in other countries, by using Liberia’s lax financial infrastructure.

Spiteri then said that the funds located in Carlton accounts, including those that allegedly belonged to Phillips, were transferred to a MASA client account and MASA was instructed to move the funds in such a way as to lose the audit trail.

Accordingly, Spiteri explained, various accounts were opened and some funds were deposited in Swiss accounts. The money had ended up in a client’s account in MASA’s name at Lombard Bank, from which they have seemingly disappeared.

Patrick Spiteri’s antics are not limited to money laundering, indeed his ‘professional’ services were used by the former Labour government and especially by former finance ministers Lino Spiteri and Leo Brincat, who asked him to draw up a replacement for the VAT regime. It was a business liaison that was criticised by some newspaper commentators.

Later on, he focused his attentions on other matters, employing with him the former president of the Labour Party, Mario Vella and Daphne Caruana Galizia, now a columnist and public relations officer. Both individuals have long since parted with Patrick Spiteri.