A property developer was on Thursday accused of multiple counts of misappropriation and conspiracy to commit fraud.
The charges, some of which date back to 2018, name 25 people who alleged they lost most of their savings in payments to Alexander Mercieca for homes that never materialised.
For each count, police said that alleged crimes involved more than €5,000 in funds taken from victims.
Mercieca, 61, pleaded not guilty.
Last year, Times of Malta reported how Mercieca was being chased by dozens of people, including young couples who were set to buy property from him, contractors who worked on his sites and even the taxman, with whom he had a €140,000 pending bill.
A long paper trail showed how people bitten by Mercieca were left in the lurch as the properties they had intended to purchase remained in shell form for months on end or in some cases were never built at all.
One couple, Stephen Mifsud and Marouska Fenech, had described how the Qormi site where their reasonably priced apartment was supposed to be built, replacing an old factory, remained untouched for months, with the couple later finding out that Mercieca had not been able to purchase the property himself.
Three years after the promise-of-sale, the site that was meant to house Stephen and Marouska’s future home in Qormi was still untouched. Inset: Stephen Mifsud and Marouska Fenech were among the many impacted buyers. Photos: Karl Andrew Micallef“The €20,000 was all our savings. We lost all of it, we were left without a home and we had to take a loan just so that we could pay a deposit on another apartment,” Mifsud said at the time.
“We are morally and financially devastated. We barely make ends meet and we’re paying two loans, just so that we can have a home. We fear we will never see our money back.”
In his reply to Times of Malta at the time, Mercieca said that he had set out with the intention of building affordable housing, but the pandemic as well as a few “legal upsets” had eaten into his profitability.
During the arraignment on Thursday the court upheld a prosecution request for a freezing order of €1,063,884 on Mercieca’s assets.
Prosecutors did not object to a request for bail but asked that the accused be barred from approaching witnesses. The court upheld the request and granted Mercieca bail against a deposit of €2,000 and a personal guarantee of €50,000. He was barred from travel and ordered to sign the bail book at the St Julian’s police station every day.
Police inspector Andy Rotin and AG lawyers Nicole Sladden and Andrea Zammit prosecuted. Brandon Kirk Muscat appeared as legal aid for the accused.
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