A money laundering case against a butcher-owning couple that has been going on for two years is set to start afresh, after a blunder by prosecutors led a court to order a restart to proceedings.
Anthony Manicaro and his wife Mary Grace, 60, had landed under a money laundering probe after allegedly registering a €2 million turnover at their Tarxien poultry store since 2013, whilst declaring an annual income of €20,000.
Prosecutors have accused them of money laundering and illegally cashing customers’ social benefits cheques.
Police suspicions were first roused by a significant number of cheques deposited into the couple’s joint bank account, many issued by the Central Bank or by third parties.
Investigators later spoke to various customers, many underprivileged getting by on social benefits, who explained that it was “convenient” for them to cash their cheques at the couple’s store, avoiding long queues at the post office or bank branches.
The husband and wife were charged with money laundering and allegedly running an unlicensed financial institution.
Both have always denied the charges.
But two years down the line, with the prosecution approaching the end of its evidence stage, the case took an unexpected twist.
When the couple turned up in court on Monday morning- the husband now wheelchair bound- prosecuting inspector Oriana Spiteri asked for permission to exhibit documentation showing that the attorney general’s office had delegated responsibility for prosecuting the case to the police.
Following recent legal amendments, financial crimes prosecutions are the remit of the attorney general’s office.
In the Manicaro case, it appears that criminal charges had been tweaked along the way, but those changes were done by the prosecuting inspectors without first obtaining the necessary delegation from the attorney general’s office. That meant that the proceedings would have to start afresh.
In an attempt to avoid that, Spiteri asked the defence to exempt the prosecution from summoning all witnesses who have testified so far and from submitting all evidence afresh.
Defence lawyers Franco Debono and Francesca Zarb were not willing to grant such an exemption, leaving the court with no option but to order a restart to the entire case.
However, the court appointed a medical expert to examine the wheelchair-bound man to confirm whether he was fit to face proceedings in view of his medical condition.
During Monday’s sitting, the court heard from a court-appointed financial expert who testified that, in his view, income reported by the couple on their income tax returns “seems to have come from legitimate activity.
”The expert said he was unable to determine whether all the income earned from cashing clients’ cheques had been declared on their tax returns or whether third-party cheques which the couple had cashed were derived from legitimate business activities. He also told the court that he could also not determine if customers had been charged a fee for cashing their cheques at the couple’s store.