Three charged with defrauding casino

Two Italians and a Slovenian allegedly defrauded the Casino di Venezia in Vittoriosa of about b172,000 (Lm74,000) when they made use of stolen bank drafts and forged cheques to gamble and then cashed in the winnings, a court heard yesterday.

Magistrate Miriam Hayman heard Police Inspector Antonovich Muscat give an overview of the investigations that led to the arraignment of Italians Fabio Zulian, 41, and Gaetano Caramazza, 58, and Slovenian Nevio Barut, 44.

All three are charged with defrauding Vittoriosa Gaming Ltd, that runs the casino, and other people of thousands of liri and making use of false documents.

Mr Zulian and Mr Caramazza are also charged with money laundering.

Inspector Muscat explained that on December 5 he was informed that three representatives of the Casino di Venezia had filed a police report.

They claimed that a group of Italians had gone to the casino that weekend and the previous one and used cheques and bank drafts originating from Italian banks and belonging to third parties.

The casino also learned that the bank drafts were stolen and the cheques had been issued from closed accounts.

On investigating, the police learned that one of the men had presented the cheques and bank drafts at the casino to be exchanged for betting chips. Those chips were then distributed among five or six players to limit the losses.

At the end of the night, the winning chips were presented to the casino which paid the winner in cash or through win cheques. It turned out that the casino had issued several win cheques to these men, via Swift transfer.

Although five payments, amounting to b172,000 (Lm74,000) had gone through, the transfer of an additional b101,000 (Lm44,000) had been stopped in time.

The inspector went on to say that the police eventually learned that the foreigners were to go back to the casino the following weekend and, with this information in hand, the police intercepted them on arrival at their hotel.

Among the group of men were the accused. Mr Barut was found to be in the possession of nine bank drafts worth b450,000 (Lm193,000).

He told the police that the documents were not his and that Mr Zulian had asked him to keep them for him while they were on the plane to Malta. But Mr Zulian said he knew nothing about the documents. He, however, admitted that he had made use of five bank drafts, each worth b50,000 (Lm21,000), the previous weekend at the Casino di Venezia.

He added that the documents had been given to him to use by third parties. The police were still investigating these third parties.

Inspector Muscat added that, on arrest, Mr Caramazza was found in the possession of four blank cheques.

Further investigations revealed that the cheques had been presented to the casino by Mr Zulian and Mr Caramazza.

The three men were arraigned on December 10. During yesterday's sitting, Mr Barut filed a guilty plea and Magistrate Hayman gave him time until the next sitting to reconsider his plea. The Italian men are pleading not guilty.

Police Inspector Muscat prosecuted with the assistance of Attorney General representative Arthur Azzopardi.

Lawyer Giannella Caruana Curran represented the casino.

Lawyers Joseph Brincat and Stefano Filletti appeared for Mr Zulian, José Herrera and Veronique Dalli represented Mr Caramazza and Duncan Borg Myatt appeared for Mr Barut.