About 230 people, including three Transport Malta officials, will be arraigned in connection with hundreds of licences granted to people who did not even sit for a test.

The police have already filed charges against the people suspected to have paid Transport Malta officials to be given additional driving licences – to drive a truck or a motorcycle, for example – without taking the necessary test, police sources said.

The investigations date back to last June, when a number of driving licences were seized and three TM employees were suspended.

The irregularities were uncovered by a private audit firm which last January was commissioned to investigate claims by Labour MP Joe Mizzi that the system was being abused.

In its report, PricewaterhouseCoopers found that some people had “fraudulently benefited” from the addition of a new licence category without having sat for the test.

The auditors tested 127 cases reported since 2001 and found that while in 42 cases people had sat for the driving exam, 85 cases “remained questionable”. A sample used to test pre-2001 licence holders found 75 per cent of cases to be “suspect”. Also, about 12.5 per cent of licences issued between 2007 and 2009 were suspected to have been released “free of charge”.

The people who will be arraigned will be facing a number of charges, including complicity in the falsification of licences, making a false declaration, perjury and corruption.

Mr Mizzi had said in Parliament last January that the then Malta Transport Authority was not collecting its dues and, instead, money was being pocketed.

He claimed people were being bribed to re-issue licences on the pretext that these had been lost or destroyed. Information on the authority’s computers was being deleted and files destroyed.

In 2006, the transport regulator was hit by a scandal that saw two driving instructors being convicted of bribery. Two authority officials were convicted for taking bribes the following year.