FTS corruption: appeal filed against Edward Caruana’s acquittal

An urgent appeal has been filed by the police against a judgement delivered by Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech on Monday, through which she acquitted former minister Evarist Bartolo’s chief ‘canvasser’ Edward Caruana of serious charges of embezzlement of public funds and bribery linked to public school projects.

A spokesman for the police, which investigated and prosecuted Caruana, has informed The Shift that the police have already filed an appeal against the judgement.

The police and the Attorney General usually take much longer to decide whether to file an appeal. In this case, the police acted immediately, a day after the judgement was handed down.

The case will now be heard by the Court of Criminal Appeal by a judge yet to be assigned.

Sources close to the police told The Shift that the prosecution in the case is “flabbergasted at the way the magistrate interpreted the law and let Caruana off the hook”.

This is in line with comments given to The Shift by various criminal lawyers, who called the magistrate’s reasoning “strange” when she declared that the prosecution had failed to prove that Caruana was a public official. This was one of the main premises on which Caruana was acquitted.

The magistrate said that before his employment with the government’s Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools, Caruana was employed with “a private company”, referring to Resources Support & Services Limited (RSSL), which is a fully-owned government company established to absorb employees from other state entities.

It was former FTS CEO Philip Rizzo who brought the case to the police after months of pleading with then-education minister Evarist Bartolo and disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat to take action against Caruana over claims of corruption.

Caruana was employed at the FTS by Evarist Bartolo and was given a €50,000 a year job as a manager responsible for public school maintenance and building projects.

During the court case, it emerged that Caruana used to deliver payments to school contractors by hand and persisted in doing so even when he was formally asked to discontinue the practice.

Former FTS chief financial officer Christopher Pullicino, now deceased, had also testified that he had been compelled to report Caruana to his superiors after Caruana threatened him when he asked him to stop distributing cheques.

In 2016, Pullicino even had to email FTS Chairman Saviour Formosa to report an incident with Caruana over the cheques.

“I just had a telephone call on my mobile at 16.32hrs from Mr Edward Caruana who has referred to me as ‘l-iktar L*** li hemm hemm gew’. …. I humbly ask you to provide protection since this is tantamount to bullying which I consider unacceptable.”

Pullicino told the court that Caruana “did not take ‘no’ for an answer” and used to say that he was as powerful as the minister.

Caruana’s brother, Joseph, the permanent secretary at the education ministry at the time, is now the Commissioner for Inland Revenue.

At the time of the corruption claims, Caruana was busy turning his Rabat house into a massive apartment block.