Police sergeant gets jail time after being found guilty over Marsa flyovers extra-duty fraud

Former traffic police sergeant Norman Xuereb was jailed for five years and ordered to pay €53,000 after being found guilty over a fraud linked to extra-duty payments for the Marsa flyovers project.

The fraud centred on officers being listed and paid as though they had performed extra duty at Marsa, when they were often not actually there, or when the work was being covered during normal duty hours instead.

The investigation began after anonymous information reached the police in 2019 about alleged abuses in the Traffic Section’s extra-duty system. It was later found that between February 2018 and December 2019, Transport Malta and Infrastructure Malta paid the Police Commissioner €534,014.19 for traffic-management services, while Xuereb himself received €53,000 for extra duty linked to the Marsa flyovers project.

During the Marsa flyovers project, Transport Malta, and later Infrastructure Malta, required police officers to control traffic around the works. The Police Corps provided officers through its “extra duty” system, under which off-duty officers could work additional hours and receive extra payment.

Xuereb was a police sergeant in the Traffic Section and, during the relevant period, acted as the liaison officer between the Police Corps, Transport Malta and Infrastructure Malta on traffic-management duties linked to the Marsa project. He coordinated the extra-duty work and prepared the invoices for payment.

As evidence, the prosecution used mobile phone location data, duty sheets, invoices prepared and signed by Xuereb, testimony from police investigators and Infrastructure Malta officials, and datatrack data from police motorcycles.

The court heard that Xuereb’s police motorcycle was one of the few traffic section motorcycles whose datatrack was functioning properly. The court also noted that, in a statement, Xuereb himself said he routinely checked that the datatrack on his motorcycle worked. 

The prosecution also made reference to Xuereb’s own police statements, where he admitted several times that the Marsa extra duty was not actually being worked in practice. In his police statement, Xuereb admitted the Marsa extra duty was not being worked in practice and, when asked whether he was prepared to refund the money he had received, replied that the money was “not his” and that it had been a mistake.

Xuereb also claimed that he had an arrangement with Infrastructure Malta CEO Frederick Azzopardi that it did not matter where he was during extra-duty hours as long as he answered the phone and responded when needed.

Azzopardi denied the claims in court, explaining that while Xuereb had given him his personal mobile number in case he could not be reached on his work phone, there was no agreement that officers could skip on-site work and still be paid. He also maintained Infrastructure Malta was not aware of the fraud since it generally relied on police recommendations about how many officers were needed.

The defence attacked the admissibility of parts of the prosecution’s evidence, arguing the data track evidence was fallible, and that there were chain-of-custody issues with mobile phone evidence and WhatsApp chats. The court did not accept the defence’s arguments, highlighting the weight of the combination of the duty sheets, datatrack, mobile data, invoices, witness testimony and Xuereb’s own statements.

Instead, it found that Xuereb had created an “artifice” to hide the truth that neither he nor his colleagues were actually carrying out the Marsa extra duty as listed. The court said the deception allowed Infrastructure Malta to keep paying invoices prepared and signed by Xuereb, so that he and others would continue receiving payment for work they were not actually doing.

Magistrate Marse-Ann Farrugia found the former police officer to be guilty of fraud, false declarations, and committing offences which, as a police officer, he had a duty to prevent.

Magistrate Farrugia sentenced Xuereb to five years in prison and imposed a permanent disqualification from holding public office or public employment. He was also ordered to pay €767.26 in expert costs, while the court decreed the confiscation of €53,000 and ordered him to pay an additional €53,000 to the Police Corps, representing the illegal gain made at the Corps’ expense.

The prosecution was led by Superintendent Rennie Stivala and Inspector Bernard Bunce.