The author of a book about the statues in the Churches of Malta and Gozo is claiming that his work has been plagiarised by convicted fraudster Josef Grech who is the founder of the Dominic Mintoff Foundation and author of the former prime minister’s autobiography.

Author Joseph Mary Grech claimed that Josef Grech took advantage of the similarity in their names and published a book bearing the exact same title as his original work called Vari Ta Malta u Ghawdex published in 1998.

The author, and his lawyer Emmy Bezzina, claimed that Josef Grech published a book last year containing the same content as well as 80 scanned photos from his original work.

He sent a judicial letter to the Josef Grech who he is alleging plagiarised his work, Doreen Spiteri from Dom Communications that published the plagiarised work in 2014 and the Dom Mintoff Foundation that owns shares within the publishing house.

The letter was also sent to the National Library asking it to stop circulating the plagiarised work as well as the Attorney General and the Police Commission asking for an investigation into the theft of his intellectual property.

The author called on Josef Grech and the publisher to remove the plagiarised book from the market and gave the police and the AG a month to investigate the case before taking further court action.