The punishments handed down to the first seven men convicted of defrauding the VAT Department may turn out to be even lighter than previously thought because of an "anomaly" in the law, The Times reports today.

The men who pleaded guilty last week (the first of a group of 32) avoided prison and were given suspended sentences and fines, the highest of which was €700.

They were also given a perpetual general interdiction, which is commonly understood to mean that they lose their right to vote, hold public office, work with the government, buy or sell property and sign any contracts.

But the only term listed in the Criminal Code is that that they lose the right to hold "any public office or employment". It also means the loss of the right to vote because it is specifically mentioned in the electoral law. However, other than that, people who are not government employees, politicians or notaries are practically untouched by a general interdiction as given by the criminal court unless they are interested in running for politics, senior legal experts have confirmed.

It is only in the civil court that an interdiction includes the other terms that basically reduce a person's legal status to that of a minor.

Since the same wording is used in both the civil and criminal codes, the Ministry of Justice could not confirm what the interdiction imposed by the court really means in this case and said that "there is definitely an anomaly which may need to be addressed through a revision of the law".

Nonetheless, a number of prominent legal experts, who would rather not be named, insisted that this is no anomaly because the interdictions issued by the civil and criminal courts are given for very different reasons and, therefore, had nothing to do with each other.

See also: http://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090917/local/legal-anomaly-could-soften-penalty