Christian Borg's rights not breached by driving licence revocation over 6,810 penalty points

A court has found no human rights breach in the Malta Transport Authority’s decision to revoke Christian Borg’s driving licence over the thousands of penalty points incurred by his massive rental car fleet.

The reason for the transport regulator’s decision to revoke Borg’s licence was the fact that it had accrued a staggering total of 6,810 penalty points.  These were the result of the thousands of contraventions and fines which had been collected by his 38 personal vehicles and his fleet of 746 rental cars over a span of six years, between 2012 and 2018.

Borg, a one time associate of Prime Minister Robert Abela, had been involved in several companies, including car-rental company Goldcar which was stripped of its operating licence in March 2023. He obtained his driving licence at 18 and started his rental company soon after.

In separate proceedings, Borg is facing charges, together with others, in connection with the kidnapping and threatening of a man over a debt. He had also been accused of illegally employing non-EU nationals at a car wash that he owns, but was acquitted largely as a result of prosecutorial mistakes. At one point, Borg was also being investigated by the police in connection with the use of cryptocurrency to smuggle drugs, arms and even explosives into the country.

In addition to the criminal proceedings, Borg’s car rental outfit, No Deposit Cars Malta, is currently facing multiple civil lawsuits, one of them filed by over 70 former customers, who besides claiming the vehicles they rented had been illegally fitted with hidden tracking devices, are also demanding a police investigation into suspected tax evasion and fraud by Borg.

Judge: Borg was aware of the law and its penalties before starting his rental business.

In a decision handed down yesterday, Mr. Justice Joseph R. Micallef, presiding over the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction, dismissed Borg’s case against the State Advocate and the Malta Transport Authority, also ordering Borg to suffer the costs of the case. The State Advocate was non-suited.

The court had heard witnesses testify that Borg held a “public service garage licence” and had held a driver’s licence since his 18th birthday. The latter licence had been subject to a three year probation period and was subject to revocation if more than 12 penalty points were incurred during that period. 

After obtaining his driving licence, in 2012, Borg had successfully applied for the necessary permits to operate a car rental company.

The law regulating car rental operations burdens the operator with every contravention and fine incurred by the vehicles he leases.

By mid-2016, hundreds of penalty points had accrued on Borg’s licence from the vehicles he rented out, even though he had not been personally involved in any of the contraventions. It also emerged, however, that he would pay the fines for some of the contraventions without contesting them, telling the court that “often it would be useless for me to contest the contraventions…because the majority of my clientele are foreign and would have already returned to their country of origin.”

At the time, when a car registered to Borg was found to have committed a contravention that carried licence penalty points, the Authority had a system in place where it would write to Borg once every month to inform him the amount of penalty points incurred by his fleet to be deducted from his personal driving licence. The letter would tell Borg to bring his counterpart driving licence to the authority’s offices in order for a note to be inscribed on it, to reflect the deducted penalty points.

It emerged that Borg had been sent one such letter in May 2012, but had not attended the appointment, which had led to his licence being cancelled the following year.  

Borg’s lawyer then wrote to the Authority requesting a remedy, arguing that the situation that he found himself in was not his fault.

In June 2014, Borg sent a judicial letter to the Authority to stop it from revoking his probationary driving licence and to issue him with a permanent one. After this request had been rejected, Borg had filed proceedings before the Administrative Review Tribunal in July 2014, and subsequently filed his Constitutional case in July 2016.

The court noted that in the years since the case had been filed in 2012, Borg had continued to collect penalty points on his licence, reaching 6,810 points in November 2018.

“The court understands that, ever since he had started his car rental business, the applicant had always had a large amount of vehicles under his control and the problems relating to contraventions incurred by vehicles leased to third parties were not only related to the penalty points system.

“Secondly, it emerges from the evidence that the Authority had sent for him in 2012 to regularise his position and if need be explain the situation, which he had ignored and failed to attend. It was because of this that his licence had been revoked,” observed the judge.

“The petitionary remedy is a statutory one, introduced years before the applicant had obtained his driving licence and therefore covers the entire period relating to the applicant’s complaints,” pointed out the judge. Besides this, it emerged from the documentary evidence exhibited that Borg had, on occasion, appeared before the Tribunal and succeeded in obtaining a favourable outcome.

“In other words, the applicant had and used remedies provided to him by the law, despite his claim not to have had the means to bring witnesses and evidence and at no time had he been deprived of access to a court or tribunal to defend his case.”

The judge said the reason for the difficulties which Borg had claimed to have hampered his access to due process “appeared to be difficulties created by the lack of organisation in the running of his business.” 

The judge said that were he to uphold Borg’s argument, the court would be allowing people to brush off responsibilities that they had contractually accepted. 

The regulations were clear and the outcome of his action was predictable, said the judge, adding that had Borg made timely use of the tools provided and made available to him by the law, he would have been in a good position not to bring upon himself the punitive sanctions handed to him.