A court has ordered the police commissioner to investigate two Identita’ agency officials who gave “totally conflicting” versions when testifying in proceedings against an Egyptian man who allegedly falsely told the agency that he was married to an English woman to obtain a permit to live and work in Malta.

The order was issued by Magistrate Kevan Azzopardi on Monday afternoon after the two witnesses contradicted each other as to whether a file related to the accused’s application had been traced in the agency’s records.

Chief information officer Stefano Rodoligo said that he had asked an official from the Expats section to search for the file in Identita’s archives.

The agency had issued the Egyptian man, Moustafa Ata Moussa Darwish, a permit in March 2023 but that card was revoked on police orders this month.

Rodoligo testified that Isaac Micallef, from the Expats section, had personally taken the requested file to his office. The file contained documentation related to the accused’s application for a permit as a non-EU family member.

“Are you sure?  Magistrate Azzopardi, evidently perplexed asked, since minutes earlier, Micallef had testified that he found no trace of the file on the agency system nor in the archives.

The court duly directed the prosecution to call Micallef back into the courtroom. In the presence of Rodoligo, Micallef once again confirmed that he had not found the file he had been tasked to look up a week ago. Micallef also said that he had been handed a list of names to look up.

Woman denies having any links to the man she was supposedly married to

An English woman, supposedly married to the accused, testified about a call she received two years ago from an Identity Malta official asking whether she had sponsored any family member to take up residence in Malta.

She denied it outright.

The woman, who settled in Malta and frequently travelled abroad for work purposes, said that that call in 2022 was “out of the blue. The caller gave no explanation for the query but simply asked her to confirm her reply via email and when she did, she received a simple acknowledgement saying, “thanks for confirming.”

The witness said that she heard nothing else about the matter until a more recent call from Inspector Lara Butters from the Immigration Unit asking whether she was married, whether she had ever travelled to Egypt and whether she had any Egyptian acquaintances.

The woman explained that she was previously married to a British national. The couple had divorced and she had not re-married and had never had anything to do with any Egyptian nationals.

She settled down in Malta in 2020.

The woman travelled from Japan - where she had been working - to testify in the proceedings against the Egyptian man who obtained a permit by falsely claiming that he was married to her.

The case came to light following an internal investigation by the compliance unit at Identita’ which revealed how various Egyptian nationals acquired a residence permit by claiming that they had a British spouse.

Inspector Lara Butters was asked to assist in the investigations.

Asked by defence lawyer Nicholas Mifsud how she had confirmed that the residence permit was false, Butters said that she had called the British woman because she had no other documents in hand.

“There was no file. Just an application on the computer,” said the inspector. Pressed further by the defence, the inspector said that Identita’ official, Maria Spiteri, who no longer worked at the agency’s expatriates section, used to input application details on the computer system.

The accused first came to Malta as an irregular migrant, one of a group of 59 boat persons rescued at sea in August 2018. He had no personal documents but only a Samsung mobile phone. Yet in June 2022, he somehow travelled to Istanbul with an Egyptian passport and a Maltese residence permit, testified inspector Hubert Gerada.

A representative from the International Protection Agency said that the accused’s application for asylum status was rejected and was still subject to appeal.

The accused’s permit had been revoked after it turned out that it was allegedly obtained by means of a false declaration.

“He was never honest with the police,” argued Butters.

But the defence countered that Identita’ had acted prematurely when revoking the permit before the case “had even been judged and decided upon.”

At the end of Monday’s hearing, the court upheld a request for bail after the owner of a barber shop where the accused was regularly employed, stepped in as third party guarantor. The court granted bail because the accused was still presumed innocent and the defence offered adequate guarantees. The accused’s employer was to secure a €5,000 third-party guarantee over and above a €10,000 personal guarantee binding the accused.

Inspector Lara Butters and Christian Abela prosecuted. Lawyers Nicholas Mifsud and Tiziana Micallef were defence counsel