Lawyer jailed for forgery

A lawyer was yesterday jailed for two years for forging a contract to show he no longer owed money on the purchase of land and a notary's signature on the contract to make it look authentic.

Dr Patrick Spiteri was also found guilty of trying to obtain money or property by false pretences.

Magistrate Joseph Cassar heard how Dr Spiteri, 38, of Wardija, had planned to sell part of a parcel of land he had originally bought from Carmel Muscat and his siblings to Emanuel Muscat and his wife for Lm16,000.

The two Muscat families in this case are not related.

Notary John Debono had drawn up the contract of the sale between Carmel Muscat and Dr Spiteri while Notary Ian Spiteri had overseen the research for the contract between Dr Spiteri and Emanuel Muscat.

The police claimed the copy of the contract signed by Notary Debono given by Dr Spiteri to Notary Spiteri had been forged and this claim was yesterday declared proven by Magistrate Cassar.

The magistrate ruled he did not believe the contract left at Notary Spiteri's office by Dr Spiteri was a draft copy kept by Dr Spiteri for his records but believed it a forgery meant to deceive the potential buyers and their notary and defraud Carmel Muscat.

The magistrate said Dr Spiteri's behaviour begged the question: "why would he leave a draft copy and not the original when he had an authentic copy of the original?"

He noted that the contract published by Notary Debono had laid down that the purchase of 1,468.032 square meters of land for Lm100,000 was to be settled as follows: Lm50,000 on the date of the contract, Lm25,000 within a year and another Lm25,000 within two years.

But the forgery registered that Lm50,000 were paid before the contract and the other Lm50,000 were paid on the day of the contract.

The forgery also bore a signature and initials on each page and the notary's signature at the end but these signatures were a forgery as had been attested by the handwriting expert. The forger had come in contact with the notary's signature and had used his knowledge in the forgery.

The expert had however said he could not "exclude that Dr Spiteri had or had not" committed the forgery but Magistrate Cassar said the court had no doubt it was committed by the lawyer because the copy had never left his possession.

The magistrate said Dr Spiteri had effected changes to a contract in a bid to mislead people into thinking that the contract they were seeing was an authentic copy and he did not owe Carmel Muscat and his brothers any money.

"The court cannot believe that the copy was a draft which Dr Spiteri took to the signing.

"It is clear... that Dr Spiteri made the changes himself, kept the copy himself, never let it out of his possession and eventually tried to pass it off as an authentic copy," Magistrate Cassar ruled in concluding that the signatures were forged by Dr Spiteri despite the lawyer's avowal that he knew nothing about them.

Magistrate Cassar ruled that Dr Spiteri meant to pass off the forged contract as the real thing because the promise of sale agreement was about to expire and he wanted the sale to go through without a hitch.

This would also have enabled him to defraud his creditors of quite a large amount of money but the fraud had not been accomplished. As such Dr Spiteri could only be found guilty of attempted fraud.

Police Inspector Bernard Zarb prosecuted.

Dr Emmanuel Mallia and Dr Giannella Caruana Curran were counsel to Dr Spiteri.