Verdict in Noel Arrigo trial expected tomorrow

The verdict in the trial of former Chief Justice Noel Arrigo is expected to be delivered tomorrow, informed sources said.

The trial was held before Mr Justice Giannnio Caruana Demajo, who retired to consider his decision on Thursday.

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that Dr Arrigo, who resigned seven years ago, faces four to six years imprisonment if he is found guilty of accepting bribes to reduce a drug trafficker's sentence.

The case will be judged under the criteria set out by law at the time the alleged crime was committed in July 2002, when the main charge of bribery carried a maximum jail term of just three years.

Dr Arrigo is charged with accepting a bribe of €11,650 when he reduced the sentence of drug trafficker Mario Camilleri from 16 to 12 years.

All those involved in the corruption case, including former judge Patrick Vella, were jailed.

Dr Vella, who admitted to accepting €23,000 in exchange for reducing Mr Camilleri's jail term, was sentenced to two years in March 2007.

Since news of the scandal was broken by former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami during a news conference in August 2002, both the penalty for bribery and that for trading in influence, which Dr Arrigo is also accused of, have been raised. The most significant change was made to the bribery charge, where the maximum was raised to eight years.

The maximum for trading in influence was raised from one year to 18 months. However, the change also entails that someone charged under this article could have his assets frozen or even confiscated.

The third charge of revealing official secrets remained the same and is subject to a jail term not exceeding one year or a fine.

The last charge is the only one not being contested by Dr Arrigo. He did not plead guilty to this, but it is not being challenged like the other charges even though his lawyers said they had reservations over whether an appeals judgment qualifies as an official secret.

The toughest fight is being put up against the bribery charge, which Dr Arrigo is defending by arguing that his actions were not influenced by any 'gift' since money given to him was given after the sentence was communicated.

This argument was advanced by the defence lawyer Joe Giglio in his final submissions on Thursday, who submitted that under Maltese law a person cannot be bribed after performing a favour for another individual. Instead, the offending act must have taken place before the event.

Dr Arrigo has admitted he accepted €11,650 in connection with the reduction of the jail sentence, but has been adamant all along that the judgment was written before the money was given to him and that this did not influence him in any way.

"If I had to re-write that judgment a hundred times, I would do it the same way," he said when testifying last week.

However, the prosecution is questioning the credibility of the former judge, who admitted during the trial that he had lied to police to derail their investigations.

Chief prosecutor Anthony Barbara focused on the conversations Dr Arrigo had with the middlemen in this case - his childhood friend, Anthony Grech Sant, and Joseph Zammit, known as Is-Sei - about the possibility of the sentence being reduced.

"There is only one truth and his actions indicated what his intentions were," Dr Barbara submitted. "This is a person who never imagined he would be caught."