More than €200,000 in fines were forfeited by the State on the strength of presidential pardons granted over the past six years, official figures show.
A total of 414 applications for a presidential pardon were filed since 2010 and 43 were accepted, according to the information supplied by Justice Minister Owen Bonnici in reply to a PQ by Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi.
All but six of the applications were related to fines – and most were to do with VAT, with the fines ranging from a few hundred euros to several thousand. In total, the State forfeited €206,152 in fines in six years, either by completely pardoning the amounts or reducing them substantially.
The largest amount pardoned amounted to €55,000, in 2012, benefiting an individual who had another €1,400 fine pardoned that same year.
A number of concessions were made to allow payment to be made in monthly installments.
The presidential pardon, regulated by the Constitution, is according to practice granted specifically on the government’s advice. It is usually of two types: those lodged by individuals and general pardons, known as amnesties, which apply to groups.
Questions sent to the government asking on what grounds pardons were granted had not been answered by the time of writing.
Legal sources, however, said the high proportion of tax-related pardons was connected to the fact that the laws regulating VAT were too stringent. Magistrates often had no option but to impose fines, and lawyers then had to seek a remedy through the presidential pardon mechanism.
Before requests for pardons are given to the President for consideration in line with the Justice Minister’s recommendation, the opinion of the competent authorities, including the police, the VAT Department and other bodies according to the nature of the crime in question, was sought, a ministry spokeswoman said.
The case in question is also reviewed by legal experts.
Presidential pardons have been part of Malta’s legal system for decades. The legal sources said it was a practice which followed the principle of the Queen’s Pardon, which exists in the British legal system and which is reflected in Malta’s Constitution.
Six of the pardons documented in the parliamentary reply were unrelated to fines, and four of them involved imprisonment.
One of these was the request by the Court of Appeal to pardon a four-day jail term. The case was perhaps the most public pardon in recent history, after Mr Justice Giovanni Grixti accidentally jailed Żurrieq mayor Ignatius Farrugia for four days and then immediately sought to remedy it.
The judge had confirmed a conviction for harassing blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2013, when Mr Farrugia was fined €2,400 and ordered to stay away from Ms Caruana Galizia for a year. On appeal, the guilty verdict was confirmed by Mr Justice Grixti, who converted the fine to effective jail time.
When Mr Justice Grixti realised this was a mistake, he immediately petitioned the President to pardon Mr Farrugia and release him. Two hours later, Mr Farrugia was out of jail. Mr Justice Grixti later faced disciplinary proceedings before the Commission for the Administration of Justice.