A magisterial inquiry has found no wrongdoing by a former Land Department employee investigated for corruption, forgery and illegally occupying a publicly-owned farm in Bidnija.

Instead, the inquiring magistrate recommended that the police investigate another person believed to have passed on false information to the police triggering the magisterial inquiry and a fully-fledged police investigation.

Luke Sant had been suspended on half pay in November 2015 pending the outcome of an investigation following a story published on Times of Malta in connection with allegations that he taken over the use of a farmhouse in Bidnija with land spread over 12 tumoli (close to 14,000 square metres). The land was estimated to be worth more than €1 million.

At the time, he worked as a technician at the Land Department’s Estate Management Office. He was repeatedly seen on site, making “improvements” to the area with his grandfather and a padlock installed by the Land Department to secure the property had been replaced.

From the outset, even in comments to this newspaper at the time the story was published, Mr Sant denied any wrongdoing, insisting he was not involved in the matter.

This was confirmed by Magistrate (now judge) Francesco Depasquale who, when concluding the inquiry, said that Mr Sant had been the victim of fabricated evidence and a false report, recommending that the police investigate the person who could have fabricated such evidence.

Police Inspector Anna Maria Xuereb told the court the Internal Audit and Investigations Department within the Prime Minister’s Office had received an anonymous letter about Mr Sant’s alleged involvement in the falsification of documents and corruption, resulting in the occupation of public land.

The department had investigated the matter and sent the file to the Attorney General who then reported the matter to the police.

According to the anonymous report, Mr Sant had altered a notice on The Malta Government Gazette to obtain signatures on a portion of land in Bidnija and which would, as a consequence, transfer the lease onto his father.

Initial verifications found that the wording of a September 2013 notice on The Malta Government Gazette had been changed and that this had be used to persuade farmers to sign a document for the land to be transferred to Mr Sant’s father.

Police investigations had led the police to believe that someone else could have been behind the fabricated evidence submitted to the police and this resulted in the arrest of other people. The magistrate had also appointed a technical expert to analyse a number of computers that had been seized by the police. The expert concluded that he only found files related to the document in question on a computer that did not belong to Mr Sant but to another person who had been arrested over the case.

The inquiring magistrate, therefore, brought the expert’s conclusions to the attention to the police and the attorney general and said that if any criminal action were to be taken it should be against the owner of that computer and not Mr Sant.