Another acquittal, thanks to Gafa’s police force

Michael Stivala, a reported “top Labour donor” and president of the Malta Developers Association, who gave Joseph Muscat a consultancy job two months after his resignation, has been acquitted. Why? The magistrate blamed the “multiple shortcomings” of Angelo Gafà’s police force.

Stivala was charged with using the blue badge of his father, who died in 2020. The CRPD asked the family to return it in July 2020, but it remained on Stivala’s car dashboard until September 2025, when the commission sent another request. Days later, a LESA official spotted the badge in the car. Stivala was asked to report to Gżira police station but never turned up.

Michael Stivala was finally arraigned in court on charges of unauthorised use of the blue badge and failing to report to the Gżira police station as instructed.

But the case against him conveniently and rapidly fell apart.  The police failed to summon the LESA official who spotted that blue badge in Stivala’s car to testify. The police failed to exhibit the blue badge as evidence. In a police affidavit related to the case, Police Sergeant M Saliba simply referred to a “Jason” without giving a surname or any clue who “Jason” was and what his part in  Stivala’s charges was.

Magistrate Yana Micallef Stafrace had no choice but to dismiss the case.  She never decreed that Stivala hadn’t abused his father’s blue badge. On the contrary, she lamented the fact that the case had been scuppered by the police’s “multiple shortcomings”.

Stivala told the press, “Having examined the facts and evidence presented before it, the Court of Magistrates acquitted me of all charges, confirming the position I have maintained throughout these proceedings”.

His position was that he never misused his late father’s badge, that he never received any letters asking him to return the badge and that the car was used by a company employee.   He never explained how his late father’s badge ended up in his car, or how nobody noticed it there for the five years between 2020 and 2025.

Stivala wasn’t satisfied being let off the hook.  He mocked the journalists who contacted him: “I genuinely question whether this matter warrants such attention, particularly following my acquittal – our country is facing far more pressing issues”.

Stivala’s acquittal does warrant attention – because that acquittal wasn’t based on an evaluation of all the evidence.  It was the result of police failure to present the necessary evidence.

What’s more worrying is that Stivala isn’t the first powerful person close to Labour who benefitted from the opportune incompetence of Gafa’s police force.

Ray Fenech, Yorgen Fenech’s uncle, has also recently been acquitted of all charges because the police botched his prosecution. Instead of charging him as the representative of the company that held the licence for Tiffany’s, the police charged him personally.

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech chastised the police for their “easily avoidable errors” which allowed those breaking the law to escape justice.  Fenech allowed an employee to manage Tiffany’s at Portomaso without the required licence, who then went on to disrupt the neighbouring residents’ lives by playing amplified live music late into the night.

Christian Borg, whose lawyer was Robert Abela and who participated in a dodgy property transaction that reportedly netted Abela a €45,000 profit, was also conveniently acquitted of charges after the police failed to produce the transcript of key testimony.  Borg was prosecuted for alleged perjury, yet the police failed to present the document recording Borg’s false testimony under oath, engineering his acquittal.

Robert Agius, tal-Maksar, who had been represented by Abela between 2012 and 2016, was charged with possession of cocaine and trafficking of heroin.  But the police failed to test the white substance they caught him with, and Agius was acquitted of all charges except possession of a bullet, for which he was fined €500.

Had the police done their duty, Agius would have been jailed for a very long time.  None of the other crimes he was later convicted for would have been committed. And Daphne Caruana Galizia might never have been blown up. Now we’ve discovered that Agius has his own mobile phone while serving a life sentence for supplying the bomb that killed her.

Charles Mercieca, Yorgen Fenech’s defence lawyer and the son of Labour MP Franco Mercieca, was also acquitted of serious charges of attempted bribery of a journalist.  The case against Mercieca fell apart when the Attorney General’s note of referral cited “passive bribery” rather than the “attempted active bribery” which the police alleged.

Despite these pathetic, repeated blunders that resulted in the acquittal of these well-connected persons, no action has ever been taken.  The police commissioner never disciplined any of his bumbling officers.

He never ordered any investigation to establish whether these “errors” were truly stupid mistakes. Neither did the Attorney General.  None of Labour’s ministers responsible for the police force ever summoned the Police Commissioner to demand an explanation for his force’s repeated errors.

Nobody from Robert Abela downwards took any action to ensure justice was delivered. Nobody was bothered by those botched prosecutions.  Instead, we keep being told to lump it and let the institutions work.

Justice should not only be done, but it must also be seen to be done.  In Labour’s Malta, justice is not only undone, but it’s also seen being undone – day after day.