A Libyan national was yesterday charged with conspiracy in the cash-for-residency permits scandal that surfaced last summer.
Ali Fauzi Ltetey, 38, of Tripoli who lives in Sliema, pleaded not guilty to misappropriation, fraud and conspiring with accountant Joe Sammut.
He was also charged before Magistrate Neville Camilleri with forging and using forged documents, being an accomplice with Mr Sammut and relapsing.
Mr Ltetey had been given a suspended sentence for trafficking two men into Sicily in 2008. He was convicted of human trafficking after having illegally helped migrants leave for Sicily. In December 2013, he was sentenced to 18 months in jail suspended for two years and fined €24,000.
He was arrested from his Sliema apartment
Sources told the Times of Malta Mr Ltetey had been on the run since August, when the police began investigating the case. He was arrested from his Sliema apartment on Wednesday after the police received a tip-off about his whereabouts.
Defence counsel Arthur Azzopardi told the court his client was pleading not guilty to the charges and that bail would not be requested at this stage.
Mr Sammut, 58, a former Labour Party treasurer, stands charged with helping Libyans set up companies in Malta to obtain residence permits using fraudulent means including forged documents .
He is also charged with misappropriation and non-observance of the due diligence expected of him in his professional capacity. It is being alleged that, in most cases, the companies were fake and held phantom stocks.
When testifying in the compilation of evidence in Mr Sammut’s case, Ryan Spagnol, senior manager responsible for residence permits at Identity Malta, spoke of “excessive familiarity” between staff of Mr Sammut’s office and some employees at the government entity he worked for.
Libyan witnesses recounted they used Mr Sammut’s services to form companies in Malta though the companies never traded. They admitted they had never seen the lease agreements attached to their files and that the signatures purporting to be theirs on the lease agreements had been forged.
Both cases continue.