An amendment introducing an obligation on notaries to carry out research on provenance is being proposed in a bill published this morning in today's Government Gazette.
Introducing the bill to a news conference, Lands Parliamentary Secretary Jason Azzopardi said that the law was currently silent on this issue and the proposal was for this to become an obligation.
The amendments being proposed in the bill were the most extensive since the law first came into effect in 1927.
Another amendment being proposed is for the notary to be obliged to keep clients' deposit and tax funds in a trust account so as to be separate from his personal property.
In this way, should creditors these would be separate from the notary's personal belonging and would not be able to be seized by creditors.