An Appeals Court yesterday cleared a 61-year-old Gozitan man of making use of a counterfeit €100 note to pay for his car licence, revoking a suspended prison sentence he had been handed by the Court of Magistrates.

The court, presided by Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri, liberated Peter Paul Azzopardi, from Victoria, Gozo, who on 26 May 2008 was found guilty of using a counterfeit note, after it ruled he had nothing to do with the note and should not have been found guilty.

The case was revealed by a Senior Principal at the Licensing Department, Joan Spiteri, after a secretary, Simone Cini, said that Azzopardi had paid the Department €1,083.12 for his car licence.

The payment consisted of a €1,000 packet of notes, one was a €100 note and the rest was made up of €50 notes. He added a further €83.12, which he pulled out of his own wallet.

That very evening Ms Spiteri had gone to deposit all the cash at the Bank of Valletta. The next day, bank manager Joseph Aquilina called to inform her that among the cash passed on there was a counterfeit €100 note.

She insisted the only €100 note she deposited was that received by Azzopardi, and she informed him of what had happened. His reaction was that he had obtained the note from the Nadur branch, when exchanging the old currency, and said he was not prepared to pay for this problem.

She then reported this to the police. Aquilina testified that when he went to pay, there was only one €100 note, and although first denying he knew of its origins, later admitted it had been paid to employees at a supermarket he owned.

He said all the bank notes received at the supermarket were tested using specific equipment, and said the secretary had also tested the money.

The Appeals Court found that when he had received the money, before using them to pay someone else, he did not know it was counterfeit, and that both times the note had been tested, it did not emerge that it was counterfeit.