A magistrate has slammed the prosecution for burying her in boxes of paperwork and evidence against alleged money laundering financial advisory Nexia BT.
Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech on Tuesday refused to accept three large boxes of documentary evidence, saying the prosecution ought to have gone through it first and only presented what was necessary.
The documents were brought by witness Emily Benson representing the Malta Financial Services Authority, and relate to corporate licences for BTI Management Ltd and BT International Ltd, two firms linked to financial advisor Brian Tonna.
Tonna, fellow Nexia BT directors Karl Cini and Manuel Castagna and office manager Katrin Bondin Carter face charges of money laundering and falsifying documents, among others, in prosecutions sparked by inquiries into alleged corruption by former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri.
All the accused are pleading not guilty.
Upon seeing the boxes of evidence being brought into the courtroom, the magistrate grew visibly irked.
“What are we, Wasteserv? Do we just throw out documents to the court now?" the magistrate asked.
"This has to stop. One has to bring only what is relevant. Not all the backing documents and documents and more documents,” she exclaimed.
The magistrate said the prosecution had to tell her how every document being presented is linked to the charges in question.
Frendo Dimech said she would not accept having to appoint costly court experts to carry out analysis of documents that should have been done by the police during their investigations.
“This is not professional,” the increasingly irate magistrate said in a raised voice.
Under Malta’s current judicial system, judges and magistrates must stamp and sign every single piece of evidence submitted in court. That system could soon change, with the government understood to be looking at alternative systems used in other countries.
Frendo Dimech has already been overwhelmed with 12 terabytes of data – an amount roughly six times larger than the entire Panama Papers data leak – submitted to the court as evidence in an unrelated money laundering case.
Throughout Tuesday’s sitting concerning the Nexia BT accused, the magistrate was handed a number of other hefty documents from several witnesses.
She said court staff were having to do enormous amounts of overtime to sift through reams of papers being presented in complex money laundering cases.
It was at this point that the MFSA witness said she and her team had actually cut the submitted evidence down from the six boxes of documents that were originally envisaged - prompting a look of incredulity from the magistrate.
Defence lawyer Stephen Tonna Lowell pointed out that the number of unchecked documents being presented showed that the prosecution had clearly not done its work properly.
“I hope we all know that is why these boxes are all being piled up,” he said.
The lawyer said he would need three years to prepare his defence of this case.
The witness said she perfectly understood the magistrate’s difficulty.
“They [the prosecution] are playing guesswork with what we have at the MFSA. They don’t know what we have,” she said.
That phrase was later withdrawn by the witness and struck from the court record, following private discussions in chambers between the magistrate, prosecution and defence lawyers.
“Although I may have initially thought you hit the nail on the head with your assertion of guesswork, I understand now that you were clearly told what was and was not brought here to exhibit,” the magistrate told the witness.
Lawyers Stephen Tonna Lowell, Gianella de Marco, Franco Debono, Michael Sciriha and Matthew Xuereb appeared for the defence.
The case resumes on June 3.