Updated 5.40pm
Police combing through a laptop belonging to former MP and medical doctor Silvio Grixti found document templates bearing other doctors’ names indicative of document forgery, a court heard on Friday.
Grixti is one of five people charged with playing a key role in a massive disability benefit racket that is believed to have cost taxpayers as much as €6 million.
Times of Malta reported last year evidence indicates that Grixti, a popular family doctor, provided false medical documents to help people, often hailing from Labour strongholds like Żabbar, Żejtun and Paola, to receive monthly social benefits for severe disabilities they did not suffer from.
The fraud saw the claimants receive monthly payments averaging €450 from the social security department.
The former PL MP was set to be charged in court last month. But the magistrate hearing the arraignment - Leonard Caruana - abstained at the eleventh hour, forcing the sitting to be postponed.
The case against the former Labour MP and others - Roger Agius, 45, Emmanuel Spagnol, 69, Dustin Caruana, 36 and Luke Saliba, 33 – began on Friday.
How Grixti was caught
A court presided by Magistrate Rachel Montebello heard former Economic Crimes Inspector Anthony Scerri testify that the probe was triggered by an email from permanent secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister Joyce Cassar about a man who appeared to have presented three false certificates when applying for severe disability benefits.
That email landed on Scerri’s desk in October 2021, he testified.
The medical specialist whose name was on the falsified documents, psychiatrist Peter Muscat, told him that the man in question – Frank Farrugia – was not his patient and that he had not signed the documents bearing his name.
A month or so later, Farrugia was arrested. Under interrogation, he admitted to having presented the falsified documents to the medical board to obtain disability benefits, but insisted Grixti had sorted out the paperwork.
What police found on Grixti's laptop
Police then got a warrant to search Grixti’s home and clinics. They seized a laptop in the doctor’s presence from his Għaxaq bypass clinic, as well as his mobile phone. They also searched another clinic in Żejtun and his home in Marsaxlokk.
Grixti opted to remain silent during his interrogation. Farrugia confirmed his previous statements, in Grixti’s presence.
Both Farrugia and Grixti were given police bail while their devices were being analysed.
Testifying, Scerri said that when they analysed Grixti’s laptop they found more than just the documents Farrugia had alluded to.
There were also “a considerable number of other templates bearing other doctors’ names which were possibly also fabricated,” said Scerri.
“Some were signed by lawyers who were ‘doctors’ but not in the medical sense and others were even signed by foreign doctors based abroad,” the witness said, adding that investigators divided the samples into batches as they tried to understand the scale of the fraud.
Investigators also found documents from Transport Malta on Grixti’s laptop.
“At the time I could not understand what those TM documents had to do with such cases,” Scerri told the court.
By consulting the transport authorities, he learnt that the documents referred to drivers having their licences withdrawn after they were certified as severely disabled. That was a prerequisite for applying for severe disability benefits.
Sensing the wide extent of the case and since police bail could not be extended further, investigators decided to delve further “then take whatever steps needed to be taken.”
Farrugia was subsequently charged and was handed a suspended sentence after registering an admission.
The man who brought Grixti down
Testifying on Friday, Farrugia said that Grixti had written him sick leave certificates allowing him to go on sick leave between September 2020 and March 2021.
Grixti told him to come see him when he was summoned by the medical board to be interviewed about a disability benefit application.
When Farrugia received an appointment date, he went to Grixti’s clinic. The doctor typed a letter on his laptop and gave it to him, to present to the board.
That letter certified that Farrugia could not go back to work because of his medical condition. It bore the signature of “Peter Muscat.”
Farrugia said he told Grixti that Muscat had never examined him, but Grixti reassured him that “you have my signature. You have no problem.”
“So I did as he said. I thought that was the procedure,” said Farrugia.
The medical board sent for him two more times. Each time, he would go to Grixti’s clinic and get another “letter” to present to them. Each was typed up by Grixti, signed by ‘Peter Muscat’ and given to Farrugia with instructions to hand it to the medical board.
Farrugia said he had never been a patient of Muscat’s, though he acknowledged under cross-examination that he had seen another psychiatrist privately.
When asked whether Grixti was his personal doctor, Farrugia said people “had mentioned him” to him. Pressed further, after a lenghy pause Farrugia said Grixti was his family doctor.
A €6.2 million fraud
A top social services department official, George Cremona, told the court that the earliest recorded case in the racket dated back to 2016.
The department had so far blocked payments to 321 recipients, he said. Some of those might not yet have been charged.
In all, the state is believed to have been defrauded €6.23 million.
Asked specifically about Roger Agius, one of the co-accused, Cremona said that €43,398.43 had been paid to Agius since he was certified by the medical board in 2016. Payments were blocked in November 2023 upon police instructions.
As for Luke Saliba, he was paid €23,650.18 and still owes the department an outstanding balance of €21,250.
Defence lawyer Jason Azzopardi asked both Scerri and Cremona whether they had ever discussed the need to request a magisterial inquiry into the case.
Both said they had not. Azzopardi also asked Scerri if he had looked into two OPM officials, Ray Mizzi and Sonio Abela, the lawyer said were involved in the racket. Scerri said he had no knowledge of that. The question sparked a strident reaction from the prosecution.
Over 400 suspicious documents on laptop
A former cybercrime unit officer who worked on the case, Timothy Zammit, testified that around 428 files on Grixti’s laptop were deemed relevant to the investigation.
He initially flagged 630 files but removed 208 which were duplicates, he said.
Zammit was questioned at length by Grixti’s lawyer Franco Debono about the specific instruction he had received from Scerri. “Was it limited to Farrugia?”asked Debono.
Zammit confirmed that he had been tasked to search for documents related to Farrugia but came across others that were similar.
“If I’m told to look for a suspected false €50 note and I come across a €20 note that is also suspicious, my duty is to flag that too,” said Zammit.
Questioned about the devices’ chain of custody, Zammit said that after removing its one-terabyte hard disc, the laptop was placed inside an envelope and put in an archive box at the cybercrime office, according to normal procedures.
All five co-accused are pleading not guilty to money laundering, fraud, involvement in a criminal organization, falsification of documents and use thereof as well as defrauding the Social Services Department which are being represented as victims in the case. Spagnol and Caruana were also separately charged for breaching bail.
Agius and Caruana said they are public works employees, Spagnol is a pensioner and Saliba works at a commercial establishment.
Magistrate Rachel Montebello upheld the prosecution’s request for a freezing order. The case continues.
AG lawyers Abigail Caruana Vella and Charmaine Abdilla are prosecuting together with Inspectors Andy Rotin, Wayne R Borg and Shaun Friggieri.
Lawyers Franco Debono and Arthur Azzopardi are counsel to Grixti. Lawyer Jason Azzopardi is counsel to Agius. Lawyers Michael Sciriha and Roberto Spiteri are counsel to Caruana and Spagnol. Lawyers Jose Herrera and Matthew Xuereb are counsel to Saliba.