Christian Borg customer files court case after spotting his ‘repossessed’ SUV being driven by LESA officers

A hire-purchase customer who bought an SUV from No Deposit Cars, only for it to be “repossessed” one night in August 2022, spotted the same vehicle being driven around by a LESA official two years later, court filings show.

The Serbian man filed a judicial protest against former No Deposit Cars Director Christian Borg and its present director Joe Camenzuli, as well as No Deposit Cars Malta Ltd and its holding company Princess Holdings Ltd.

Lawyers Jason Azzopardi and Kris Busietta, assisting the plaintiff, argued that a tracking device concealed in the vehicle had allowed the company to know the car’s location at any point in time.

The use of this practice had previously been confirmed in other court cases against No Deposit Cars. The surveillance had caused the plaintiff to suffer fear, stress and anxiety, the lawyers said.

The judicial protest says that when the plaintiff filed a police report about his car being stolen, the officers on duty at the Birkirkara police station had refused to act, telling the man that what had taken place was not a criminal offence.

It was this attitude from law enforcement that enabled Borg and his business associates to continue to act with “impunity and audaciousness,” reads the judicial protest.

It goes on to state that in February, to his great surprise, the plaintiff had spotted the car bearing the same number plates, now bearing a LESA logo, being driven around Mellieħa by a LESA enforcement officer in Mellieħa. He saw it again in April, being driven by a LESA official in Attard.

The man’s lawyers are arguing that clauses in the hire-purchase agreement were in blatant breach of civil and criminal law, consumer protection and privacy legislation. 

These actions had caused the man to suffer material and moral damages, they said, and indicated that Borg and his associates were involved in money laundering, fraud, theft and criminal conspiracy. 

Ivanovic said he had already informed the Police Commissioner of all this, by filing a criminal complaint about these allegations so that criminal action may be taken against Borg and his associates. 

To add insult to injury, the victim was subsequently mailed a €388 bill for towing charges.

Borg and a number of his business associates are already the subject of ongoing criminal proceedings where they are charged with kidnapping and threatening a man whom Borg suspected of stealing one of his vans. 

He is also accused of illegally employing non-EU nationals at a car wash that he owns and is facing a civil case filed against No Deposit Cars by over 70 customers who claim they were defrauded, 26 of whom have also filed a separate judicial protest demanding a police investigation into alleged fraud and tax evasion by Borg.

Borg is reported to have frequently boasted of being untouchable because of his friendship and business connections with the Prime Minister, having also been a client of Robert Abela’s legal office and other government officials.

In a court decision dissolving one of No Deposit Cars' contracts last month, magistrate Victor Axiak said that the No Deposit Cars hire purchase contract  in that case was "impossible to uphold."

"The court has no hesitation in saying that in general, the contract is an almost diabolical one, suffocated with prohibited and/or unfair clauses that strip the consumer of every dignity and which truly has the form of an academic case study in how a contract between a business and the consumer should not be."