A man accused of defrauding a businessman of some €750,000 also left another man in financial ruin, a court heard yesterday.

Sandro Maggi said that Joseph Friggieri, 45, from Msida, who is unemployed, defrauded him of about €11,000 in 2010.

The situation became so bad that he could not afford to pay his children’s school fees and was left in a state of financial disaster, he said.

He told Magistrate Antonio Mizzi that he had first given Mr Friggieri €6,000 in cash in 2010 to pay for the duty on a container of goods that Mr Friggieri claimed was arriving in Malta. The accused promised to pay the money back within a week.

Mr Maggi felt confident about this because Mr Friggieri had told him his family owned the Busy Bee confectionery and that he worked in the education department.

But Mr Friggieri made several excuses not to repay the debt. As he chased him for the cash, Mr Maggi’s brother suggested he should ask Mr Friggieri to get his children into De La Salle College since he worked at the education department.

Mr Maggi said he phoned Mr Friggieri who told him to hand over €2,700 in cash to pay for books, uniforms and other necessary items. The amount would be refunded once the children were accepted at the school, Mr Friggieri said.

So bad was his financial situation that the bank had even stopped his platinum card, Mr Maggi said. When he told Mr Friggieri this he said he would phone Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg about it.

At the end of the sitting, Mr Friggieri complained he was receiving threats and was reporting them to the police, but Magistrate Mizzi replied that he could make as many reports as he liked because it was all self-inflicted.

Mr Friggieri also stands charged with duping businessman Joseph Spiteri and his son Rodney into spending money on tenders and projects that turned out to be false.

The Spiteris had testified that the total amount stood at about €750,000.