Inside the law courts: a look back at 2022

Two jailed for 40 years over Daphne Caruana Galizia murder

The standout story of the year is the Degiorgio brothers’ sensational admission of guilt, on the first day of their trial by jury, to carrying out the 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The two triggermen in the car bombing that claimed the life of the 53-year-old veteran journalist pleaded guilty, just two days short of the fifth-year anniversary of her assassination. The plea was made a mere nine hours into the start of their murder trial in October.

George Degiorgio, 58, known as iċ-Ċiniż and his brother Alfred Degiorgio, 56, known as il-Fulu, entered their admission shortly after the midday break at 3pm, reversing their earlier plea of not guilty. They received a 40-year prison sentence.

The third assassin, Vincent Muscat had received a 15-year sentence in 2021 after pleading guilty at a pre-trial stage.

The man indicted for conspiracy and complicity to commit the murder, millionaire heir Yorgen Fenech, remains in preventive custody awaiting a date for his trial.

In a connected case, Jamie Vella, who is indicted on charges relating to the procurement of the bomb, together with brothers Adrian and Robert Agius and George Degiorgio, unsuccessfully requested the judge slated to preside his future trial by jury to recuse herself.

Vince Muscat known as il-Koħħu

HSBC Bank robber dishonours plea deal in embarrassing miscalculation by AG

In January, Vince Muscat ‘il-Koħħu’, currently serving time for the Caruana Galizia murder was due to go on trial for his part in the 2010 failed armed robbery of HSBC headquarters. The prosecution’s star witness was Muscat’s fellow conspirator Daren Debono ‘it-Topo’. It emerged that right on the eve of the trial, Debono’s lawyers had brokered a secret plea deal with the Attorney General, under which he would admit the charges and receive a 10-year sentence in return for his testimony against Muscat and other conspirators.

News that the public prosecutor had agreed to drop attempted murder charges against Debono, who had fired 65 shots at police officers during the heist, led the Malta Police Union to express its disgust and memorably invite Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg and her staff to “the next gun fight, to experience what death looks like when it is so near”.

But despite receiving the reduced sentence under the plea deal, once the sentence was confirmed, Debono simply refused to identify his accomplices anyway, citing fears for his safety. He got 6 months for contempt of court.

Wrong defendant charged in illegal employment case involving Prime Minister’s friend

That same month, another magistrate slammed the bungled prosecution of Christian Borg, an associate and erstwhile client of the Prime Minister, which had led to his acquittal on charges of illegally employing foreign workers. In a separate case, Borg is accused, together with four others, of having kidnapped and threatened a man in January this year.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, being charged with kidnapping, recidivism as well as being the subject of a criminal investigation into drug dealing and money laundering rackets was no obstacle to his car rental companies winning tenders by LESA (a week before his arrest in January 2022) and Transport Malta (April 2022), worth upwards of €300,000 in total. Nothing to see here, move along.

Failure to inform suspect of arrest leads to drug trafficking suspect’s acquittal

Also in November, the arrest of Stefano Montebello on suspicion of drug trafficking - he had been arrested while in possession of 46 sachets of assorted illegal narcotics - was declared illegal by a court after it emerged that he had not been informed that he was under arrest and read his rights as required by law.

In December, a judge declared the practice of filing separate criminal cases over individual failures to pay alimony is “abusive and solely aimed at inflicting the maximum possible damage on the accused.”

Failure to arrest ex-MGA official causes international embarrassment

MGA compliance officer – turned freelance gaming consultant Iosif Galea was arrested in Italy in May, on the strength of a European Arrest Warrant issued by Germany, which had somehow not been actioned in Malta, despite Germany sending three reminders. Italian police took Galea into custody upon his arrival on a holiday at Cellino San Marco with his partner and a group of friends that included former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his wife.
A Frankfurt court subsequently found Galea guilty of evading €1.7 million in taxes owed to the German State between May 2017 and December 2019 in his capacity as director of Tipbet Limited.

Comparisons are odious and all that, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that it took these two countries less than five months to conclude this case from extradition to conviction. According to a European Commission report published in May, financial crime cases spend five years in Malta’s court doldrums, on average.

Senior prosecutor found dead at home

Lawyer Karl Muscat, an experienced prosecutor at the Office of the Attorney General who had been handling several high-profile criminal cases, including those against Yorgen Fenech, Ryan Schembri and Christian Borg, was found dead at his home on August 3rd. He was 43 years old. A magisterial inquiry into his death is currently ongoing.

Murder victim and mother of two, Bernice Cassar

Womens’ rights, domestic violence in the spotlight

To say the 35 officers making up the Malta Police Force’s Domestic Violence Unit had their hands full this year would be a crass understatement, with the unit having received 1480 reports in the first 10 months of 2022 according to official figures.

• This year’s most serious such case is that of Bernice Cassar, a mother of two, who was shot dead by her husband as she drove to work in November. Roderick Cassar now stands charged with wilful femicide, an offence introduced into the Criminal Code this year as a result of amendments sparked by the murder of Paulina Dembska in Sliema on New Year’s Day.
• Dembska’s self-confessed killer, Abner Aquilina, stands charged with murder. His lawyers are building a defence based on insanity.
• The month of April also saw two separate arraignments of men accused of threatening to shoot their wives and children.
• In June, the plight of an American woman on holiday in Malta made international headlines, after doctors refused to terminate her unviable pregnancy, for legal reasons, because the foetus still had a heartbeat, despite all amniotic fluid being lost and a detached placenta. The woman was evacuated to Spain where the pregnancy was terminated. She later filed a Constitutional case against Malta, claiming her life and health had been put at risk. The case is still ongoing, but the debate it ignited could lead to a change in the law. An amendment to the criminal code, permitting abortion when the woman’s life and health are at stake passed to the committee stage in parliament in late December.

Magistrate Nadine Lia

NGO, magistrate go to war over who should preside Pilatus Bank challenge proceedings

Anti-corruption NGO Repubblika is accusing Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg of ignoring the recommendations of a magisterial inquiry, by having issued a nolle prosequi - an order not to prosecute- Pilatus Bank owner Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, its operations supervisor Luis Rivera, the bank’s director Ghambari Hamidreza and bank official Mehmet Tasli.

In challenge proceedings filed last June, the NGO asked the court to compel the Police Commissioner to prosecute a number of Pilatus bank officials singled out by the Pilatus Bank inquiry over breaches of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, making false declarations to a public authority and participating in a criminal association with the intention to commit an offence which was punishable with more than four years imprisonment.

But the FIAU had closed its investigation into Pilatus Bank in 2016, less than a month after its chairman sent an email to former OPM Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, complaining about the financial crime investigation unit’s “wrong allegations.”

Challenge proceedings are normally heard by Magistrate Nadine Lia, but the NGO asked that she recuse herself in this case, due to a conflict of interest. The grounds, in a nutshell, are that the magistrate’s father-in-law, lawyer Pawlu Lia, was former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s personal lawyer. Muscat had also engaged Pawlu Lia to set the terms for the 2017 Egrant inquiry, which had been prompted by Daphne Caruana Galizia’s claim that Muscat’s wife, Michelle, owned a secret Panama-based company, Egrant. Before her appointment as magistrate, Nadine Lia had also addressed a Labour Party rally defending Muscat’s handling of Egrant in the run up to the 2017 general election.

The magistrate, however, refused to step aside, leading Repubblica to file constitutional proceedings, arguing that the magistrate’s refusal constitutes a breach of its right to a fair hearing before an impartial tribunal.

The challenge proceedings are currently suspended pending a decision in the Constitutional case, which continues in January.

Benefit of the doubt for police and Attorney General running on empty

Ok so, the year got off to a bad start for law enforcement, but it couldn’t get any worse, right? Well…hold on to your hats, because 2022 was a year chock-full of mistakes, to use the kindest possible word, by prosecutors and the police. The collapse of case after case has taxed the public’s faith and goodwill almost to breaking point.

The examples are many, so here’s just a small selection:

Extradition of alleged Maltese drug smuggler still ongoing, 6 months after arrest

Exhibit “A”: The ongoing legal wrangle over an Italian extradition request for John Spiteri, wanted by Italy to face charges of smuggling drugs from Albania to Italy with the intention of selling them in Italy and Malta for the Ndranghetà – a prominent mafia-type crime syndicate based in Calabria.

A request for Spiteri’s extradition to Catania was initially rejected in June, on the grounds that important documentation had not been exhibited by the prosecution.

The Court of Criminal Appeal overturned that decision in August and ordered Spiteri’s case be re-heard. He was immediately rearrested, being released on bail after his lawyers took the case before the Court of Criminal Appeal. That appeal was rejected but Spiteri remains in Malta on bail, pending a decision on whether he would be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment in Italy.

Wrong offence cited in charges gets Yorgen Fenech’s lawyers off the hook

Exhibit “B”: Also in June, a court said it had no option but to acquit two of Yorgen Fenech’s lawyers of attempting to bribe a Times of Malta journalist, ruling that the Attorney General had indicated the wrong offence in the charges.

Wrong regulation cited in charges gets arms dealer off the hook

Exhibit “C”: In October, Maltese arms dealer James Fenech was acquitted of breaching EU sanctions after being charged under the wrong Council Regulation. Inexplicably, Fenech was not also charged with breaching UN sanctions, despite a UN Security Council panel finding his explanation lacking in credibility and declaring him and his company in technical non-compliance with UN sanctions against Libya. The AG did not file an appeal.

Pilatus bank

Exhibit “D”: In several sittings in the meandering money laundering case against Pilatus Bank, the presiding magistrate has repeatedly criticised the prosecution for its poor handling of the case, on one occasion accusing them of trying to “hoodwink the court,” having submitting the nth list of witnesses they wished to summons from abroad, some of whom the court had just refused, moments before.