The former CEO of the Agency for the Welfare of Asylum Seekers (AWAS) has been convicted of embezzling public funds after a court heard how he used agency resources and employees for works on his private residence and boat. 

Joseph Michael Baldacchino, 57, served as the chief executive of AWAS between 2016 and 2018.

Charges were brought against him after an investigation by the Financial Investigation Directorate within the Internal Audit and Investigation Department concluded that he had made use of the agency’s resources to purchase items for himself and got AWAS employees to carry out private work for him, sometimes even during their working hours. 

'Compensation meal'

The court heard how in one instance, he had presented a receipt of €38.75 to be refunded to him for taking an employee out for a meal at a Ta’ Xbiex restaurant. 

The accused initially said during questioning that he had taken out a female employee to lunch in recognition of her work, telling police he had done so because the woman had saved the agency “thousands of euros”. 

However, when the woman was called to testify, she denied ever having attended the lunch with him. 

On cross-examination, Baldacchino changed tack and said that it was not the employee that he had taken out to lunch, but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 

He had done this, he said, because the permanent secretary had expressly forbidden him from using agency money to pay for meals, except when these were meals for agency employees. 

He decided to defy those instructions, he said, because he did not agree with them and the head of the UNHCR was a very important person in the field of migration. 

Baldacchino said he had presented the bill for the meal to be refunded as petty cash anyway and said he had instead gone to lunch with the female employee. 

'Ħal Far cleaner used for boat maintenance'

Another incident concerned a man who had been employed by the agency to work as a cleaner at the Ħal Far open centre for €4 an hour. 

It was established that the man, a third-country national who lived at the Ħal Far tent village at the time, would be paid monthly after filling in an attendance sheet that had to be approved by the agency’s financial department. 

The cleaner testified that on June 14, 15 and 17 of 2017, the accused’s son had picked him up from the tent village and taken him to a garage in Kalkara where he spent some 26 hours cleaning Baldacchino’s boat. 

The man said he was never paid for his services and instead noted down the time he spent at the Kalkara garage on his attendance sheet, as he had not explicitly been told not to do so. 

Baldacchino insisted he had given his son €120 in cash to pay the cleaner instead. 

The court said that it did not believe his version of events. 

Based on evidence and testimony given by employees from the agency’s financial department, the financial officer had refused to approve the hours listed by the cleaner on the days that he had been taken to the Kalkara garage and left a note asking for the CEO to approve those hours. 

A review of the payment issued to the cleaner for June 2017 included the hours he had spent carrying out maintenance on Baldacchino’s boat, the court concluded. 

'CEO took shower tray intended for open centre' 

The court also heard of several instances where Baldacchino had asked employees to acquire tools or materials for him and never paid them back, allowing them instead to file receipts for their expenses to be reimbursed by the agency. 

On one occasion, Baldacchino asked a senior technical officer to give him one of the shower trays that had been bought by AWAS specifically to be installed at the Marsa open centre. 

The man obliged and loaded it into the car designated for the CEO’s use. 

Sometime later, Baldacchino complained to the same man that he had not found anyone to install the shower tray for him and the employee offered to do so himself. 

The man and two other AWAS employees went to Baldacchino’s house on a Saturday morning on which they had not been scheduled to work and fitted the shower tray for him. 

Baldacchino told the court he had tried to hand the employee €100 to pay for the shower tray, but the man had refused. He said he later gave the three men a bottle of whisky to thank them. 

The court observed that from testimony it was clear the employees had refused payment for the time and labour spent to install the shower tray and not as recompense for the item itself. 

'Accused forgot to pay because he was too busy'

The same technical officer testified that on different occasions Baldacchino had called him up to buy a pump for his boat - for which he was given specifications, paints intended for the boat and a stainless steel pipe. 

The pump and the paints had been paid for by a cheque issued by the agency. The pipe was delivered directly to Baldacchino’s Birkirkara house and the receipt was left with the accounts department. 

When questioned, Baldachino admitted it was possible that he had not paid back agency employees for the materials and tools they had bought on his instructions but that this was only because he was very busy with work at the agency and there were several problems at the refugee centres that needed his constant attention. 

The court commented that ultimately Baldacchino did not present any evidence to substantiate his claims that he had in fact paid for these items himself. 

Court denounces ‘abhorrent’ behaviour 

In a sentence handed down by Magistrate Rachel Montebello, the court observed that Baldacchino was one of the few people who were authorised to approve the agency’s expenses and therefore knew well that those expenses had not been paid out in service to the agency, but for his own gain. 

While she did note that Baldacchino had a clean criminal record and the amounts in question were not particularly substantial, the court could not ignore the fact that as CEO, the accused had abused his position by systematically using workers and funds from the agency to serve his own interests. 

“Behaviour of this kind is abhorrent because the accused evidently breached the trust he was given to administrate funds that were paid out to the agency to use in the best interest of the public,” the Magistrate said. 

While acknowledging that the role of a CEO is highly stressful and demanding, this could never justify the systematic behaviour shown by Baldacchino and as proven by the evidence, she added. 

The court found him guilty of misappropriating public funds and sentenced him to a two-year jail term, suspended for three years. 

He was also ordered to pay back €602 as recompense for the losses the agency suffered as a result of his actions. 

Past controversy

Shortly after his appointment in 2016, Baldacchino had gotten into hot water when the hiring of his son as a support worker at the agency roused anger among employees. 

In another incident in 2017, Bladacchino was given a warning after it emerged that he had created a fake vacancy in order to hire the son of a ministry official at AWAS while it was under his watch. 

According to his LinkedIn page, Baldacchino is still currently working for a public body and serves as a senior manager at the Malta Food Agency.