Looking back at 2019 | So much crime, so little time

The rapid developments in the investigation into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the publication of the Egrant report towards the end of the year overshadowed much of the coverage from court, but there were many other notable cases that deserve a mention.

Murder

Daphne Caruana Galizia

The constellation of cases sparked by the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, as well as developments in the murder investigation took centre stage for most of the latter part of the year.

A slew of Constitutional cases filed on behalf of the three alleged hitmen bogged down the compilation of evidence against them, which will now continue in January.

Of course the biggest case of the year, if not the decade, is that in which Tumas Group magnate Yorgen Fenech stands accused of masterminding Caruana Galizia’s murder. He has implicated Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s (now) former Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, who is also being investigated for homicide and obstruction of justice. Other pages of this edition will be dedicated to that story, but it’s obviously one to look out for in the new year.

Ghaxaq double homicide

A shocking double murder of a mother and daughter in Ghaxaq rocked the country in March.

Joseph Bonnici, 38, stands charged with having killed the two women inside the family home, allegedly having meticulously planned the murder, going so far as to build the firearm used himself, as well as the logistics of disposing of the bodies in a nearby field. He had then reported the victims to the police as missing. His case continues in February.

Lorin Scicluna and Francesco Fenech

Migrant murdered in drive-by shooting allegedly by off-duty soldiers

Dismissed AFM soldiers Lorin Scicluna and Francesco Fenech, aged 21 and 22 respectively, were accused of having shot Lassana Cisse Souleymane, 42, from the Ivory Coast dead in cold blood, in a racially-motivated drive-by shooting in Ħal Far in April. They are also charged with the attempted murder of two migrants from Gambia whom they injured in a drive-by shooting on the same night.

Cisse had been walking home after watching a football game when he was shot dead. Prosecutors say the accused men had murdered Cisse because of his skin colour.

After spending months in custody, the accused were granted bail in December against a deposit of €30,000, a personal guarantee of €20,000 and ordered to observe a curfew.

Bojan Cmelik, accused of murdering businessman Hugo Chetcuti

Hugo Chetcuti

The compilation of evidence against Bojan Cmelik, the man accused with the murder of businessman Hugo Chetcuti, ended earlier this year, leaving it to the Attorney General to issue a bill of indictment.

Chetcuti, a well-known businessman, died in hospital after he was stabbed by Cmelik, a Serbian national, in Paceville in July 2018. No motive has been established for the murder.

Erin Tanti was jailed for 20 years and six months after he pleaded guilty to wilful homicide

Lisa Maria Zahra murder trial

A teacher accused of the murder of a student who became his lover was jailed for 20 years and six months in June after he pleaded guilty to the wilful homicide of Lisa Maria Zahra. Zahra’s body was found under Dingli cliffs in March 2014. She was 15 years old.

Erin Tanti’s indictment states that he had been unable to accept the fact that he had been caught sleeping with a pupil and would end up jobless and branded a paedophile, so he had come up with a desperate plan to kill the girl and make it look like a suicide.

Drugs

Jordan Azzopardi

Drug kingpin Jordan Azzopardi and his 31-year old girlfriend, whose name was banned from publication under court order, were arrested in March on drugs and fraud charges.

Malta was captivated by the case of Azzopardi, who had transformed his illegal drug trade into a well-oiled criminal machine, with witnesses testifying to a garage used for illegal transactions being fitted out with metal barricades and security features, as well as vats of acid to dispose of evidence in case of a police raid.

Azzopardi has been in police custody since his arrest. The woman has been out on bail since August 2.

She is currently pleading not guilty to criminal conspiracy, fraudulently circulating fake bank notes and defrauding three stores in San Gwann and Sliema, along with her boyfriend who is also charged with drug trafficking.

Drug kingpin Jordan Azzopardi was arrested on charges involving fraud and drugs

Rape

2019 was also the year that brought the occult and the obscene into court in a big way, with a case of an 18-year-old Cospicua resident, who cannot be named on the orders of the court, who was accused of the rape of a vulnerable woman – the mother of his 15 year-old girlfriend – as well as with causing her and another vulnerable woman – her daughter – to perform sexual acts against their will, violent indecent assault on a person who was unable to resist, holding the women against their will and forcing them to perform acts contrary to their decency, slightly injuring them.

The media frenzy surrounding that case petered out, however, after a court-appointed exorcist reported in October that he had seen nothing spiritually troubling in several prayer visits to the family home.

Seydon Bandango

A 20-year jail sentence for Burkinan national Seydon Bandango, who was found guilty yesterday of having raped an Italian girl in Pembroke three years ago was handed down following a trial by jury in September.

Another man, Nigerian national Emmanuel Ngumezi, was found not guilty in connection with the same case. Jurors reached their verdict after six hours of deliberation at the end of a seven-day trial with evidence being given behind closed doors.

Bandango of Burkina Faso and Ngumezi of Nigeria had been charged with kidnapping an Italian girl from St George’s Bay in July of 2016, bundling her into a car and raping her in Pembroke.

The jury heard how Police had gone on site and had found one of the accused naked from the waist down in the car near the victim, who had been crying and calling for help. The other man, who was found not guilty of rape, but guilty of abduction, was outside the car and had fled when he spotted the Police officers. Ngumezi was jailed for 5 years and one month for his part in the crime.

Man admits to participating in gang rape of Italian girl to avoid jury trial

Libyan Hussein Mohamud, a 32-year-old Somali national, was jailed for eight and a half years in July after he pleaded guilty to the abduction and gang rape of an Italian woman six years ago.

The incident had taken place in March 2013, when the 21-year-old Italian woman had been walking towards Valletta. At one point a car, with four men inside it, had pulled up. The men grabbed her off the street and pushed her into the car. When she had tried to escape, one of the men had grabbed her by the throat and started to choke her, saying “Italiano tu sei morto” (“Italian you are dead”). The victim was raped multiple times at Hal Far.

Mohamud pleaded guilty to avoid a trial by jury.

Fraud

A Ponzi scheme involving the daughters of former politician John Dalli and 75-year-old Marie Eloise Corbyn Klein, first reported by assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia back in 2015, hit the headlines this year. The scheme was allegedly run by Corbin Klein, who operated under a number of aliases. The woman was later investigated by the FBI for having allegedly scammed Americans out of some $600,000 by posing as a Christian missionary and convincing them to invest their savings into an African mining project.

Instead the money was funnelled into two Maltese companies – Tyre Ltd and Corporate Group – owned by Louise Dalli and Claire Gauci Borda, Dalli’s two daughters, and which are registered at John Dalli’s home address in Portomaso. They pleaded not guilty to money laundering and misappropriation charges.

Patrick Spiteri

Patrick Spiteri, a disbarred former lawyer and alleged fraudster, has seen his plans to go abroad whilst on bail - ostensibly for work purposes - reduced to naught. Spiteri came to within spitting distance of release on remarkably lax bail conditions in September only to have it wrenched from his grasp barely two weeks later when an appeals court said it was not assured that Spiteri would return to Malta if he were to be permitted to travel.

Duncan Buttigieg

Notorious fraudster Duncan Buttigieg enjoyed a rare decision in his favour, seeing a 30-month prison sentence reduced by six months on appeal in September after a court ruled that, while he had committed fraud, he had not committed the crime of unjustified enrichment

Theft

Fr Deo Debono, the former parish priest of the Augustinian parish in Valletta, was given a two-year prison sentence, suspended for four years, after admitting to theft of artworks from his convent.

He was also ordered to pay €9,500 in damages to the person who bought the artworks without knowing that they were stolen.

The magistrate who heard much of the case behind closed doors, ruled that there was “an element of humiliation and blackmail” to the case, in handing down punishment.

Migrants at sea

2019 saw two very extreme cases of migrants in distress at sea. In the first, the captain of the rescue vessel MV Lifeline was arrested and eventually fined €10,000 for registration anomalies. Captain Claus Peter Reisch had been in charge of the vessel when it rescued 234 stranded migrants at sea in 2018. The rescue had caused an international dispute, with the Lifeline eventually being allowed to dock in Valletta, after which the rescued migrants were distributed amongst a number of EU countries. He has filed an appeal.

On 28 March 2019, three teenage asylum-seekers – one from Ivory Coast, aged 15, and two from Guinea, aged 16 and 19 – were arrested over the hijack of the El Hiblu 1, a merchant vessel which had rescued them in the central Mediterranean along with over a hundred other refugees and migrants, to prevent the captain from taking them back to Libya and handing them over to Libyan authorities.

Maltese authorities charged the three youths with a series of grave offences, including under counter-terrorism legislation, some punishable with life imprisonment. They have denied any wrongdoing.