Angelo Gafà and Victoria Buttigieg have intentionally delayed prosecuting key Pilatus Bank officials to ensure the crimes they are accused of are time-barred by the time that happens, Jason Azzopardi has alleged.

“It’s deliberate,” Azzopardi said of the police commissioner and attorney general's failure to act. The lawyer and former MP was speaking on Saturday in a radio interview with academic Andrew Azzopardi.

 “A magisterial inquiry that cost more than €7 million concluded that select Pilatus officials and directors should be prosecuted for financial crimes. Up to this day, attorney general Victoria Buttigieg has not presented charges.”

Azzopardi, who is representing NGO Repubblika pro bono in its legal bid to force Buttigieg to prosecute those officials, told a court this week that the interminable delays have caused two of the crimes that the Pilatus officials are suspected of committing to become prescribed by law.

Making a false declaration to a public authority and criminal association are both subject to two and five-year prescription periods respectively, meaning people cannot be charged with those crimes after those periods have elapsed from the date of commission.    

Those periods lapsed between June and a few weeks ago, Azzopardi said.

Repubblika has been fighting to have the officials prosecuted for months, and has published excerpts of a magisterial inquiry which ordered that they be criminally charged. That inquiry was concluded in February 2021.

In a radio interview last month, Gafà appeared to pin the blame for a failure to prosecute on Buttigieg. 

"The police investigate and then the decision about prosecuting is taken by the attorney general’s office," Gafà said. 

Two weights, two measures?

Speaking on Saturday, Azzopardi noted that law enforcement had no qualms about charging everyday people with those exact same crimes.

The same went for money laundering offences, he said.

“They immediately charged that Tarxien couple they suspected of cashing people’s welfare checks. And the inspector interrogating a clergy member told him that they suspect him of having ‘unexplained wealth’ because they found brand-name underwear in his drawers.

“So why don’t they use the same measure when people in Castille are seen with €10,000 handbags?” he asked.