Labour MEP wants police to press charges against Nationalist MEP Peter Agius

Labour MEP Alex Agius Saliba has written to the police commissioner to formally request that rival PN MEP Peter Agius be charged under the Identity cards Act, alleging that the PN politician did not reside at his registered address.

Agius Saliba asked the police to press charges against Agius “and other persons if the need arises” in terms of article 24(2)(b) of the  Identity Card and other Identity Documents Act - which provides that “any person who makes  any  false  statement,  or  gives  any  false information, or produces any false document, for any of the purposes of this Act, knowing the same to be false…shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a period of n oless than two years and not exceeding five years.”

The letter, which is signed by lawyer Ryan Ellul on Agius Saliba’s instruction, refers to a ONE News story, which accused the PN of “great hypocrisy and cruelty when it took people to court to stop them from doing what its own candidate, Peter Agius, did by also changing his address from Attard to Mosta.”

The move would appear to be retribution for Agius’ request, made last week, that the European Commission carry out an evaluation of Malta’s ID card system, in the wake of a scandal over the alleged issuing of more than 18,000 Maltese ID cards to foreign nationals, on the basis of fake documentation, in return for thousands of euros per document.

The criminal complaint states that Agius “had committed a crime because it is impossible that his ordinary residence is that address, because it appears that the property as shown on the media is rudimentary and not equipped with the amenities necessary to live [there].”