Accountant Joe Sammut was yesterday accused of helping Libyans set up companies in Malta in order to obtain residency permits using forged documents and fraudulent means.

The 58-year-old former Labour Party treasurer and candidate was also charged with misappropriation and non-observance of the due diligence expected of him in his professional capacity.

Arraigned under arrest in front of Magistrate Doreen Clarke, Mr Sammut pleaded not guilty to the charges as he stood impassively in the dock holding some papers and a book entitled The Assassination of the Archduke.

He was granted bail against a personal guarantee of €15,000 and had his assets frozen. The court barred him from approaching any witnesses, including his employees, and ordered him to sign three times a week at the Qawra police station.

I paid €2,000 to a representative of Joe Sammut

Magistrate Clarke heard three Libyan witnesses produced by the prosecution recount how they used Mr Sammut’s services to form companies in Malta. In each of the three cases, the companies never traded, the witnesses said.

When shown documents from their respective individual files with the Citizen and Expatriate Affairs Department, the three men confirmed that the signatures were not theirs.

The documents pertained to their applications for residency permits filed by Mr Sammut’s office on their behalf.

The Libyan men confirmed they had never seen the lease agreements attached to their files and could not recognise the landlord from a photocopy of the identity card included with the lease. They also confirmed that the signatures purporting to be theirs on the lease agreements had been forged.

The witnesses identified Mr Sammut but claimed to have dealt with his representative, a woman identified by one of them as ‘Eve’. They claimed to have paid Mr Sammut fees ranging between €1,700 and €2,167 per shareholder for services rendered. No receipts were given, but in one case the receipt was sent by Viber, a mobile phone messaging application, after the person insisted.

The three witnesses all claimed to have companies based in Libya and approached Mr Sammut through Libyan intermediaries to form trading companies in Malta.

Hesham Salaheddin, from Tripoli, who claimed to live in Sliema, said he held €100,000 in share capital in the company he had formed in Malta to import and export medical equipment.

However, he specified the share capital was paid in stock and not cash because he had no bank account.

Mr Salaheddin, who testified in English, said he went to Mr Sammut to help him establish a company and obtain a residency permit. “I paid €2,000 to a representative of Joe Sammut,” he said.

When asked whether the share capital was paid in cash, Mr Salaheddin kept repeating the paperwork was prepared by Mr Sammut’s office. He then specified that the shares were paid up in stocks and it was Mr Sammut’s office that suggested a shareholding of 100,000 shares of €1 each.

Fausi Ghait Elzeletni, from Tripoli, who claimed to live in Swieqi, said he wanted to set up a business with two other Libyan partners in Malta to buy clothes and export them to Libya. Testifying through an interpreter, he said it was one of the business partners who suggested using Mr Sammut’s services.

He said the woman at Mr Sammut’s office only asked for a copy of his passport, insurance and a small photo to initiate the process.

Mr Elzeletni said he handed €1,700 over to his business partner, who then paid the woman handling their application at Mr Sammut’s office. Each of the partners had to pay €1,700.

Mr Elzeletni said he was not present when the financial transaction took place at Mr Sammut’s office, however the woman had accompanied him to the government office when applying for his residency.

The third witness, Abdallah Meftah Bakeer, who also claimed to live in Swieqi, said he wanted to open a company to import cars into Malta and export them to Libya.

He said he owned a cement company in Tripoli, an electronics business and a car dealership. “The crisis in Libya forced me to open a company in Malta,” he told the court.

The Malta company was to be set up with two other Libyan partners. Contact with Mr Sammut’s office was made through an office in the Libyan capital and the three shareholders paid a total of €6,500 for the service.

When asked if he had any receipt, Mr Bakeer said he was not given one but when he insisted a receipt was sent via Viber.

The share capital was paid in stock and not cash because he had no bank account

The witnesses were promised immunity by the police on any wrongdoing they may have perpetrated in relation to this case.

The defence objected and insisted the evidence should not be admissible. The case continues on September 3.

Inspectors Jonathan Ferris, William Scicluna and Lara Butters prosecuted, while the defence team was made up of lawyers Michael Sciriha, Martin Fenech and Simon Micallef Stafrace.

Same pattern used in registering Libyan companies

The charges against Joe Sammut include a long list of companies he helped create in Malta for Libyans wanting residency permits.

A common trait in all the companies is equal tranches of share capital amounting to €100,000 for every shareholder. However, the share capital, which is fully paid, is allotted to the individual shareholders through stock in trade.

The amount and value of the stock is backed up by invoices issued in Libya, which are certified as true copies of the original by Mr Sammut.

In instances where the company has more than one shareholder, invoices amounting to an average of €100,000 each are produced for every individual.

Documentation obtained from the Malta Financial Services Authority’s registry of companies for one of the companies mentioned in court yesterday shows two separate invoices issued in the individual names of the two shareholders of MES Ltd, a company purporting to deal in medical supplies. The invoices are from January 5 and supposedly issued by Rawand Medical Company.

But the stocks for other companies range from perishable goods like chocolate and juices to hardware like television sets and wash basins. In one instance the stock consists of detergents.

The police investigated Mr Sammut for 10 days after his name cropped up in court two weeks ago when Libyan national Arab Ali Khalefa, from Tripoli, admitted he gave the accountant false details to help him set up a company in Malta.

kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com