Former lawyer convicted of misappropriation

A court has handed down a suspended sentence to disbarred lawyer Reuben Micallef, after it found him guilty of misappropriating nearly €7,000 from a client.

Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera had heard how, between 2007 and 2008, Micallef had been engaged by a neighbour to carry out searches related to inheritance.  

The neighbour, Martha Sammut, had commissioned the lawyer to establish whether she was entitled to anything in her uncle’s will, but he had not passed them on to his client, in spite of months of excuses. The searches had not been handed to Sammut up to the time judgment was delivered.

This was not the first time he had fallen foul of the law. In 2007, Micallef had also been accused of defrauding Audio, Standard Electronics Ltd, KVH Computers, Infomate Ltd, Vision 2000, Biedbug Development Ltd and Raymond Briffa of over Lm1,000 each over several months.

His warrant had been suspended for three months in 2009 and was subsequently revoked.

Last May, a court had found Micallef guilty of fraudulently using a client’s money as security for a bank loan, for which he was handed a two-year jail term, suspended for four.

Magistrate Scerri Herrera found Micallef, 41, guilty of misappropriation. She observed that while he was deserving of a custodial sentence because the crime had been committed in his capacity as a lawyer, after taking into account the fact that he had since fully reimbursed Sammut, the court handed down an 18-month prison sentence, suspended for four years, for his latest transgression.