Lawyer Aron Mifsud Bonnici charged with money laundering and tax evasion
Inspector tells court how police suspected leak of information to 51-year-old lawyer
Lawyer Aron Mifsud Bonnici pleaded not guilty to money laundering charges on Wednesday afternoon after he was charged following an investigation into suspicious money transfers.
The 51-year-old lawyer appeared before Magistrate Leonard Caruana, charged with money laundering and making false declarations in documents prepared for the Malta Tax and Customs Administration (MTCA).
Police Inspector Matthew Grech testified that the probe began when the police received confidential information on August 23, 2021 concerning money laundering and tax evasion.
Equipped with a PowerPoint investigation, the investigator walked the court through the years-long probe, which was split in two phases.
Police started gathering information from various local public and private entities in January 2022. At the end of that year, the police roped authorities into the investigation.
At the time, Mifsud Bonnici’s preliminary profile showed that he was a board secretary at state IT agency MITA and a company secretary at Enemalta, among other roles including director of several active and inactive companies.
A suspicious transaction between two of Mifsud Bonnici's accounts proved especially interesting to investigators, as did transactions to a brokerage firm from one of Mifsud Bonnici’s bank accounts.
Police found that Mifsud Bonnici bought three properties between 2017 and 2020 - an apartment and a garage in Attard, another apartment and a garage in Gwardamangia and a masionette and a garage in Birkirkara.
While they found the payments for the Gwardamangia apartment and garage and Birkirkara masionette, the investigators do not know how he financed the Attard apartment and garage purchase.
Mifsud Bonnici sold the Gwardamangia property and garage as well as a semi-detached villa in Naxxar in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Between February and April 2024, investigators found five transactions from his savings accounts to a Swiss bank account which he appeared to hold.
When investigators compared the amounts of money Mifsud Bonnici held in his bank accounts and the tax declarations he filed for each year, they found discrepancies, the inspector testified.
It also transpired that Mifsud Bonnici did not file tax declarations for 2015 and 2021, though he made a late filing for 2021 in February 2023.
Police suspect leak
The inspector told the court that around August 2023, right after tax authorities informed the police that they were starting to look into Mifsud Bonnici's declarations, investigators began suspecting that information about their probe was leaked to him.
Mifsud Bonnci filed a late filing for base year 2015 on August 4, 2023 and adjustments for the other years on November 20, 2023.
“The adjustments and late filings were done under suspicious circumstances,” Grech said. “It is not normal to file a late filing seven years later,” he added, noting how the corrections were made within months of the police’s request to MTCA.
He also showed a table illustrating the amounts paid in tax by Mifsud Bonnici along the years, and highlighted a visible spike in 2023.
The MTCA concluded its report in August 2024.
Grech explained how the investigators followed the money and continued to analyse what happened to the money in 2025.
Mifsud Bonnici arrested
On February 20, 2025, the police arrested Mifsud Bonnici. He was given the documents that they had. During the interrogation, he did not reply to questions about the Swiss bank account.
He was then released three times on police bail as he asked for more time to provide the information requested.
Aleksandrs Krasovskis, a representative of a financial company, also took the witness stand during Wednesday's court hearing.
The man explained that Mifsud Bonnici was deemed as high risk, since he was a politically exposed person. He was taken on as a client in 2018.
The case is set to continue next month when a representative of the MTCA is expected to testify.
The prosecution requested a freezing order to the tune of €1,661,863, which was upheld.
Defence lawyer Giannella De Marco requested a ban on the publication of the amounts of money held in the different bank accounts and the different financial institutions.
The court upheld the ban, saying it applied for Wednesday’s testimony and future testimonies.
Magistrate Leonard Caruana presided.
Attorney General lawyers Andrea Zammit and Rebekah Gatt prosecuted, assisted by Police Inspector Matthew Grech. Lawyers Giannella De Marco, Stephen Tonna Lowell, and Stefano Filletti assisted the accused.