Two men holding $1.5 million worth of "grossly false" bearer bonds have been cleared of trying to swindle a local bank. 

Both men travelled from Russia to Malta after making several attempts to have their questions answered by Lombard Bank.

They turned up at the Valletta branch on June 12, asking to speak to the manager and indicating they wanted to cash in the bonds. High-ranking officials sensed they were possibly prey to a scam and called the police.

The men were eventually targeted by criminal action for having allegedly made use of documents they knew were false and for possessing them.

However, in the course of the proceedings, it emerged that before travelling to Malta, the accused had sent numerous emails, including a scanned copy of the bearer certificates, requesting information about the validity and procedure for cashing such bonds.

A bank official confirmed receipt of these emails and testified that they had not been answered since the bank “at first thought that it was some scam”.

Moreover, in their statements to the police after their arrest, the two men had insisted that their only intention had been to “verify the validity of the bearer certificates which had been passed on to them”.

Delivering judgement, the court, presided over by magistrate Joseph Mifsud observed that had the men truly known of the falsity of the documents, they would not have taken the trouble of trying to contact the bank beforehand, but would have just turned up and attempted to cash the bonds.

The Court did not have “the slightest hesitation” in declaring that it had not been proved that the accused knowingly made use of a false document, noting further the “serious communication problem between the bank’s authorities, the police and the accused.

One of the men spoke no English whatsoever while the other claimed to speak English that was “no English at all,” observed the court. 

As for the certificates themselves, these were so evidently false, that they could not be used “to defraud anyone since their invalidity was manifestly clear,” the court said, concluding that it did not make sense to punish a person for the simple possession of such documents. 

The court noted that all four certificates bore the same serial number, no security feature and spelling mistakes. In fact, both bank officials and the police sensed at first glance that the documents were invalid. 

In the light of such “gross falsity”, the court cleared both accused of all criminal liability, and ordered the destruction of the certificates.

Inspector Christabelle Chetcuti prosecuted. Lawyer Arthur Azzopardi was defence counsel.

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