Court grants bail to defendant under eight other sets of bail conditions

The Criminal Court has confirmed a magistrate’s decision to grant bail to Terence Cini - the ninth set of concurrent bail conditions which the man is currently under.

Cini had last been granted bail on Thursday, in connection with a case in which he is accused of attempting to bribe a witness, with the assistance of his lawyer.

In a decision handed down yesterday, Mr. Justice Neville Camilleri rejected the Attorney General’s request that Cini be re-arrested. Prosecutor Kevin Valletta from the Office of the Attorney General had pointed out that Cini had been accused of attempting to suborn a prosecution witness by sending lawyer Matthew Xuereb to convey a €47,000 bribe just days before the witness was due to testify against Cini. 

If found guilty of that offence, it would mean that Cini had breached seven preceding sets of bail conditions, said the AG, arguing that the man was evidently not trustworthy, nor reliable.

After his latest bail decree, a third party had paid Cini’s €10,000 bail deposit and provided a €20,000 personal guarantee that same day, the AG added, stressing that Cini had not used the many opportunities he had been given to reform and neither did he show any inclination to change his ways.

In reply, Cini’s lawyers, Franco Debono and Albert Abela, had pointed out that it had taken the prosecution three years to produce the principal witness in this case and that, although he was charged with breaching a number of bail conditions, he had not yet been found guilty of doing so.

In his decision, Mr. Justice Neville Camilleri, presiding the Court of Criminal Appeal, observed that while it was true that Cini stood accused of breaching a number of bail decrees, at the same time the bail conditions imposed on him were “firm and binding.”