Liliana Galea, the VAT inspector and customer care officer who was sentenced to six months imprisonment after she was found guilty of received a €1,000 gift from her uncle, has had her sentence revoked on appeal. She had also been condemned to a general interdiction after she was found guilty of accepting the gift for speeding up the payment of VAT refunds to her uncle.
Ms Galea worked simultaneously as a VAT inspector and a customer care representative and in this function she was responsible to verify information given by tax-registered people when they asks for a correction in VAT returns.
In the first judgement, the court pointed out that Ms Galea had at first said the money she received was a present, only to then admit that when she received the money, her uncle told her that it was for helping out “with those envelopes”.
The first court had said that from the evidence before it, there was no doubt that Ms Galea, as a public official, helped her uncle and for this accepted €1,000
Ms Galea argued that her uncle had given her the gift because she was his niece and because she had helped him with returns.
She said that according to Maltese law one could not have bribery after the fact.
The mother-of-two said during the appeal proceedings that the jail term she was given was excessive and the fact that she had received a gift for carrying out her dut, had not harmed anyone, not even the department.
The appeals court noted that Ms Galea had received the gift after she helped her uncle and she had explained that this gift combined her birthday, which was in December, and Christmas.
From the evidence, it did not result that any of her actions were the result of having been given the gift. She had only helped her uncle avoid the queues and kept him informed about any missing returns. There was no doubt that she had no right to accept a gift for this service, but this was not corruption.
The court said it had not been proven that the gift was in connection to Ms Galea's duties.
Drs Joe Giglio, Jose Herrera and Veronique Dalli were defence counsel.