A former notary will be reflecting on the end of his “illustrious” 32-year career in a jail cell, after being convicted of misappropriation and fraud.

Pierre Falzon, a 58-year old former notary who had voluntarily renounced his warrant in 2015, will serve a five-year sentence and must pay back more than €100,000 to former clients, a court ruled on Monday.

Dr Falzon faced no fewer than 37 charges revolving around the misappropriation of funds which never made it to into public coffers.

Investigations began when the police were inundated with reports and complaints by clients of Dr Falzon, who claimed that deeds he had drawn up had not been registered, since the relatives' taxes had never been paid.

Twenty-seven cases of suspected misappropriation eventually came to light, prompting the prosecution to press charges against Dr Falzon.

In a lengthy judgment, totalling 62 pages of evidence, juridical references and reasoning, magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech concluded that the former notary was guilty of misappropriation and ordered him to refund some €112,769.

The prosecution proved that Dr Falzon would receive money intended to pay for duty on documents and/or capital gains tax and deposit it into accounts held under his wife’s name, or under the name of companies in which he had an active role.

His clients’ cheques, made out to his own name, would routinely end up in his own pockets rather than with the Inland Revenue Department.

Sometimes, he would use money given to him by his clients to settle debts with creditors “without proceeding to effect due payments to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue”, the court observed.

At times, the notary would declare in contracts that capital gains tax was due, only to then state in obligatory forms handed to the Inland Revenue Department that the relative tax was “NIL”.

This was “a totally false declaration,” the court observed.

In spite of being targeted by two garnishee orders, one in 2002 for Lm25,000 and a second in 2008 for €109,480.55, Dr Falzon kept on with his activity. It was “business as usual,” the court remarked.

As clients’ complaints piled up, Dr Falzon had moved to Spain, arguing in a separate court case that he had done so because his wife was seriously ill and needed treatment overseas. He was subsequently extradited to Malta.

So many clients who had trusted him ended up losing their hard-earned money, landing in such legal complications all because of his “capricious” behaviour, the court lamented.

The accused’s intention had clearly been “to enrich himself at the expense of clients that he had managed to deceive through his malicious behaviour,” Magistrate Frendo Dimech observed.

The court ordered him to refund €112,769 to a number of his victims, besides a further €1,020 by way of court expert expenses. Besides disqualifying him from holding a notarial warrant, the court also placed him under a general, perpetual interdiction.

Finally, the court also called upon the police commissioner to investigate the former notary and his wife over suspected money-laundering activity.

Charges relating to the falsification of signatures were not sufficiently proved by the prosecution.

Inspector Rennie Stivala prosecuted.