Court allows reduction of freezing order against Vincent Buhagiar

A court on Wednesday allowed a reduction of a freezing order against former Progress Press chairman Vincent Buhagiar, stating that a blanket order when the amount of illicit gains has been determined in money laundering proceedings would be "truly unjust".

This was the crux of a decree delivered upon a request by lawyers for the court to limit the order to assets worth just under €250,000.

Buhagiar is pleading not guilty to money laundering charges triggered by a magisterial inquiry which had led to his arraignment in March 2021.

Prosecutors alleged that Buhagiar could not explain hundreds of thousands of euros he received from a Gibraltar-based company belonging to former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri.

Buhagiar insisted that those amounts were payments for consultancy services in terms of a “gentlemen’s agreement”.

During previous sittings, Inspector Joseph Xerri testified about three suspicious transactions, spelling out the amounts in US dollars.

Those sums, added to another €50,000 payment, totalled €246,880.39 as confirmed by a representative from the Central Bank earlier this week when asked to produce the equivalent figures in line with European Central Bank rates.

Without prejudice to Buhagiar’s presumption of innocence, his lawyers requested the capping of the blanket freezing order to that amount and for the release of the accused’s remaining assets.

When delivering its decree the court, presided over by magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech, observed that the purpose of such freezing order was to preserve assets to prevent dissipation, thus ensuring sufficient amounts to confiscate in case of conviction.

In money laundering cases, the law targeted all assets, leaving it to the accused to prove before the civil courts that such property was not derived through criminal activity.

The intention of the legislator was to ensure that the suspect would not benefit from such illicit gains, ordering all profits and gains to be confiscated.

But once the amount of such illicit gains was determined or if it was shown that there were no illicit gains at all, allowing the blanket freezing order to stand pending proceedings would be truly unjust, observed the court, pointing out the difficulties and suffering such order entailed.

“And even more so when there were no illicit gains,” further noted the court.

In light of the “careful and detailed” testimony of the prosecuting officer, the court upheld Buhagiar’s request, allowing the freezing order to be reduced to €247,000.

For this purpose, the court ordered the Director of the Asset Recovery Bureau to identify and secure any type of asset amounting to that value.

Inspector Joseph Xerri is prosecuting, assisted by AG lawyers Antoine Agius Bonnici and Sean Xerri de Caro. Lawyers Veronique Dalli and Dean Hili are defence counsel.