An application for a collective action, brought by more than 620 claimants, has been filed before Malta’s Civil Courts against C-Planet (IT Solutions) Limited for breaching data protection laws.

The initiative for the collective action was led by The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation and Repubblika.

The application requests the Court to quantify and award the damages that the claimants have suffered as a result of the breach of their personal data, in accordance with the provisions of Regulation 2018/679 (‘GDPR’).

Lawyers Antonio Ghio, Carl Grech, Deo Falzon, Sarah Cannataci and Michael Zammit Maempel signed the application.

At the end of March 2020, it was reported that a database containing 337,384 records of Maltese voters’ personal information was freely accessible online for at least a year.

This data, which included names, addresses, ID card details, dates of birth, fixed and mobile phone numbers as well as a reference to political orientation or voting preferences, was left exposed by C-Planet.

Times of Malta had reported that this company left a large database file on a computer server, where it was openly accessible to anyone with a Web browser.

C-Planet Limited is a company registered in Malta. It is owned by Philip Farrugia, who is a former production director at One Productions and is also the brother-in-law of Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi, a Labour Party MP, the Parliamentary Secretary for EU Funds, and the former president of the Labour Party.

Its clients include the Office of the Prime Minister, the Health Ministry, the Home Affairs Ministry, the Ministry for Transport, the Building Construction Agency, ARMS, the Foundation for Medical Services, the Public Health Regulation Department.