A couple who own a butcher’s shop in Tarxien have been given suspended sentences for money laundering and ordered to repay the money they made from illegally cashing social benefits cheques handed to them by clients to pay for goods.

Anthony Manicaro and his wife Mary Grace, 60, were investigated for money laundering after allegedly registering a €2 million turnover at their Tarxien poultry store between 2013 and 2020 while declaring an annual income of €20,000.

However, the court heard they had only made €32,000 from the cheques over those seven years, charging some of their clients €5 per cheque cashed.

Police suspicions were first raised by a significant number of cheques deposited into the couple’s joint bank account, many issued by the Central Bank or by third parties.

Investigators later spoke to a number of customers, many underprivileged getting by on social benefits, who explained that it was “convenient” for them to cash their cheques at the couple’s store, avoiding long queues at the post office or bank branches.

In 2020, husband and wife were charged with money laundering and running an unlicensed financial institution by illegally cashing customers’ social benefits cheques.

Both always denied the charges. But they had a change of heart last month and registered a guilty plea.

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech handed Anthony Manicaro – now wheelchair bound – a two-year jail term suspended for four years and his wife a two-year jail term suspended for three years. The court found that the woman’s role in the “self-laundering” was minimal.

She also fined them €35,000 between them and ordered the seizure of €32,000, the amount they had made for cashing their clients’ cheques.

The magistrate applied the new law limiting the confiscation order to the amount that resulted from the case, instead of confiscating all the accused’s property, as was the legal position under the old law.

Under the old law, the accused would have then had to institute separate proceedings to recover back all that property, including inherited property or property acquired much before the offence, and which would not have been accrued from proceeds of crime.

The couple were also ordered to settle the €9,000 court bill.

Over the course of the compilation of evidence against them, the court heard how people living near their shop, many of who had no bank accounts and relied on social benefits, would buy meat and cheeselets from the store and settle the bill using their social benefit cheques.

They told police this spared them the long queues at the post office or the bank.

Witnesses testified that the butcher would charge €5 for every cheque cashed. However, other clients said they were not charged anything extra for their cheque to be cashed.

A father of five explained how he would buy meat and rabbits from the couple’s shop, handing over his weekly €73 social benefits cheque when settling the bill. Another man said that he used to buy poultry and eggs from the shop, “in cash or by cheque, and he [Manicaro] never took anything extra apart from payment for the goods”.

The case against them took a twist in 2022 when a prosecution blunder forced a restart after it emerged that the criminal charges had been tweaked along the way without first obtaining the necessary delegation from the Attorney General’s office. That meant that the proceedings had to start afresh.

Police Inspectors Oriana Spiteri, Keith Mallan and Danilo Francalanza prosecuted, assisted by AG lawyer Andrea Zammit.

Lawyers Franco Debono, Adreana Zammit and Francesca Zarb were defence counsel.