The prosecution was "desperate" because there is no evidence linking George Xuereb to an attempted hold-up on a bank 18 years ago, a defence lawyer insisted in court this morning.

In his final submissions to a panel of jurors before Mr Justice Michael Mallia sums up the case and sends them to deliberate their verdict, lawyer Raphael Fenech Adami said the prosecution had no evidence to pin down his client so was resting on contradicting versions that, when summed up, could not find Mr Xuereb guilty of the crime beyond all reasonable doubt as required by law.

He said even the Attorney General himself did not believe the versions of the prosecution's own witnesses as the Bill of Indictment given to jurors at the beginning of the trial spoke about how the crime was committed by three people.

On this point, prosecution lawyer Lara Lanfranco, from the AG's office, said the bill was prepared in 2009 and was based on information the police had at the time of the investigation.

The evidence and the various testimonies throughout the trial pointed at a crime committed by five people, including that of former Police Commissioner John Rizzo, who at the time was inspector and who was the person who investigated the case.

"Your job is not to investigate or draw conclusions on the way the police investigated the case and what questions you would have asked but to evaluate the strong evidence we showed you here, linking Mr Xuereb to the attempted robbery," she said.

She insisted that according to one of the men who had already served time in jail over this crime, Joseph Polidano, "unequivocally" implicated Mr Xuereb in the attempted robbery, saying he was in the van that drove away from the scene of the crime after the robbery was foiled by police.

"[Mr] Xuereb was in the van, so he was on the scene of the crime, making him the co-author of this crime," she said, as she explained to jurors that they could find him guilty of being an accomplice to the crime.

The case continues on Monday.