A five-month suspended jail sentence given to the president of the Gozo Football Association, Elvin Grech, in connection with a falsified document has been confirmed on appeal.

The story goes back to 2007 when the GFA was installing a floodlighting system at its main stadium in Xewkija.

Although, according to the Mepa permit, the pylons had to be installed at each corner inside the ground itself, somebody at the association decided that two of them be installed outside the pitch.

The reason given was that one of the pylons would cover a Go Mobile advert inside the ground.

Ronald Vella, the engineer in charge of the project, said in court Mr Grech, who at the time was GFA secretary general, had instructed him to move the two pylons outside. He said he had disagreed with Mr Grech writing a letter to Mepa justifying the divergence from the permit conditions.

Yet, he later learned that the planning authority had received a letter bearing his signature.

A police report was filed and it was established that the engineer’s signature was falsified and that Mr Grech had delivered the letter by hand to Mepa.

In its sentence, the court noted there was no evidence that Mr Grech had falsified the letter himself even though it was morally convinced that he had issued instructions on what should be written.

In March 2013, the court concluded that Mr Grech, an IT graduate, had full knowledge that the letter was falsified when he delivered it to Mepa’s office in Victoria.

He was given a five-month jail term suspended for two years.

Mr Grech appealed the sentence but the Court of Criminal Appeal, presided over by Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri, confirmed it in its entirety.

Sources told Times of Malta they found it somewhat unusual that the case was not given the sort of publicity one would expect in such circumstances.

It seemed, the sources added, that not all members of the GFA executive committee were aware of the court judgment even if the matter involved the association directly.