We secured a criminal conviction against a member of an old Maltese family on June 9. We had been encouraged by friends and lawyers not to let an arrogant, flagrant abuse of Maltese law go without recognition.

My wife and our family of five children, with our dog and two cats, had rented a house as a first secure step in our re-location to move our life from London, in May last year, to Għargħur, Malta. We paid thousands of euros as a deposit and three months' rent in advance, and began moving in. We then went to Canada to visit some friends and family for a few weeks in the summer. We did nothing wrong, and did not breach our lease in any way.

While we were away, the landlady changed our locks on us! We were told about this by third parties via e-mail. Our plans to move to Malta were up-ended. It was explained that her act was against the law but there was nothing we could do to "undo" this destruction of our life plan.

We have incurred huge expenses seeking alternative adaptations to our original happy plan. It is not easy to find rental accommodation for our small tribe in the whole of London, let alone Malta.

So finally we got our day in court after waiting 10 months for her to be forced to attend a hearing. The verdict: guilty. She broke the law. We won!

A great victory, yes? Alas, no. Why? Her punishment. She was only fined €100! This woman devastated our lives and her punishment is worth less than it cost me to take my family out for pizza!

This is definitely not a deterrent to other landlords, so why even pretend this is justice? It is a disgrace to all Maltese. When word of Malta's landlords being able to steal their properties back at will, for only €100, gets out, one might well expect the rental market here to collapse. She still has our deposit.

This was a very unhappy episode for our whole family and if it wasn't for the kindness of our Maltese friends we might well have just turned around and left with only this sad tale to tell of the island in the middle of the sea.