The Malta Gaming Authority’s former Chief Technology Officer Jason Farrugia has been charged with a raft of charges including money laundering, accepting bribes, fraud, and trading in influence in connection with his work at the regulator.

Farrugia, who is 34, pleaded not guilty to the charges, as did his 26-year-old wife Christine – who was only charged with money laundering.

Jason Farrugia was charged with offences including extortion, accepting bribes, fraud exceeding €5,000, misappropriation, trading in influence, disclosing confidential information and computer misuse.

The Times of Malta said that he resigned from the MGA in December last year after he was suspected of leaking sensitive internal information.  He had already been suspended by the authority, which ultimately elected that he should be dismissed and that the matter should be referred to the police.

Bail was denied for both.

Details about the charges against Farrugia and exactly to what part of his work they pertained to were not elaborated upon in court on Wednesday.

Farrugia had been with the MGA for 10 years, fist employed as a Licensee Relationship Executive, and later occupied the positions of Systems Monitoring Executive and Information Systems Manager respectively.

 

He was then appointed Head of ICT & Records and later as Chief Technology Officer.

Farrugia is the second top MGA official to be charged after the authority’s former CEO Healthcliff Farrugia was charged with trading in influence after communications between him and Yorgen Fenech came to light earlier this year.