A man who admitted to having lived off the earnings of prostitution by taking commissions from a Chinese massage parlour business has lost a bid to have his taxi driver licence reinstated.
Carmel Schembri failed to persuade a magistrate to revoke Transport Malta’s decision to withdraw his driver’s tag, with the court saying the law left the authority no discretion and the law had to be applied.
In 2018, Schembri pleaded guilty to making money off prostitution and to operating a brothel. He had been sentenced to 14 months imprisonment suspended for two years and fined €1,500.
The matter ended up before the Administrative Review Tribunal, presided over by Magistrate Charmaine Galea, after Schembri received a letter from Transport Malta in July 2021 that his taxi driver tag was not going to be renewed because of the 2018 conviction. He wrote to TM objecting to the decision but it replied that its decision was final.
Schembri told the tribunal that TM’s decision was “unfair, unjust, unreasonable, based on irrelevant considerations and disproportionate”. He said that, in the three years since that conviction, he always offered the best service to his clients and never had any other brushes with the law. He insisted that this was the only way he could make a living.
TM rebutted the arguments, arguing that, according to regulations, no driver’s tag can be issued to applicants convicted of specific crimes, including the ones to which Schembri had pleaded guilty.
The court agreed with this stance, saying the law tied TM’s hands and left it no room for any discretion. It, therefore, confirmed TM’s decision to revoke the man’s taxi tag.
It had emerged in court that Schembri used to rent properties in Luqa, Ħamrun and St Paul’s Bay and use them as massage parlours. He landed in hot water after a police investigation found out that the masseuses, who hail from the Dominican Republic, had also offered sexual services to their clients.
The three massage parlours, Matson Massage in Luqa, Silver Moon Massage in Ħamrun and Erot Massage in St Paul’s Bay, were licensed under Schembri’s name. The police had told the court that this was not a case of human trafficking and that the three women used to give 15 per cent of the money they made to Schembri.
During the police raid at one of the massage parlours, investigators had found a packet of baby wipes containing €800 in cash while almost €1,000 in cash was found at another parlour.