A Monte di Pietà official at whose home the police had discovered gold items and pawning tickets has been cleared of abusing his official function almost 13 years after criminal proceedings had kicked off.

Joseph Mifsud had originally been targeted by prosecution over alleged wrongdoing dating back to 2001 when the police were alerted to “suspect underhand criminal activity” at the State pawning shop, after an internal inquiry had revealed that pawned items had gone missing from the Monte’s vaults.

Investigators had later searched the suspect’s home where they discovered a number of valuables and some 11 pawning tickets.

Criminal charges were issued against the official who was alleged to have borrowed money by pawning several personal gold items and taking those valuables back home without first redeeming the loan.

A high-ranking officer at the Monte, testifying in the proceedings, had explained how the pawner would obtain a “calculated capital advance” after his valuable was assessed by an appraiser.

The loan would be accompanied by a pawning ticket, a counterfoil copy of which was kept at the Monte, the senior official had explained, adding that the original ticket would be affixed to the counterfoil only once the loan had been redeemed with interest.

In this case, investigators had allegedly found the missing gold, together with a number of pawning tickets, in the name of ‘Rose Mifsud’, at the accused’s home.

When the case was reassigned to a different court, presided over by magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech, in November 2016, it was observed, first and foremost, that the police statement released by the accused, at a time when the right to legal assistance in the pre-arraignment stage “was still far off from taking root in our procedural laws,” was no longer valid as evidence against him.

Apart from this, however, the court also noted various shortcomings which weakened the prosecution’s case.

All the tickets retrieved from the accused’s home had indicated the pawner as ‘Rose Mifsud wife of Gino,’ save for one ticket in the name of ‘Rose Mifsud wife of Joseph,’ the court observed, noting further that no ticket had been issued in the name of the accused.

Moreover, the prosecution had not ‘even remotely’ proven that this woman was actually the accused’s wife, nor that her address was actually the accused’s home.

Although the seized items had been exhibited in court inside a ‘sealed box containing gold items’, among those items had also been silver items and other precious jewels, as well as a handbag and a silver purse, together with the 11 unredeemed pawning tickets.

The prosecution had failed to present a list of the items as well as any receipt or seizure note referring to said valuables, the court observed.

There had been “an absolute failure” on the part of the prosecution to determine which of the items discovered at the accused’s home corresponded to the unredeemed tickets, the court observed, pointing out the lack of an expert valuation which could have enabled the court to establish the missing link.

It was clearly evident that the police had actually “seized more valuables than those relative to the pawning tickets,” the court continued, noting that in fact the police had claimed to have seized some Lm6,000 worth of gold, far in excess of the Lm2,150 indicated on the pawn tickets.

In the light of such circumstances, the court concluded that the prosecution had evidently chosen not to delay proceedings unnecessarily, basing its charges upon the ‘evidence’ retrieved from the official’s home and pinning its case upon his statement released during the interrogation.

Once that statement was subsequently discarded, on the strength of recent jurisprudence, the prosecution’s case was “irreparably prejudiced,” the court declared, pronouncing an acquittal.

Lawyer Arthur Azzopardi was defence counsel.