A man accused of using counterfeit bank notes at different fuel stations has been acquitted after the prosecution failed to produce any witnesses or evidence for 19 years.

In his judgement, Magistrate Victor Axiak lambasts the prosecution for not presenting a single witness or any evidence in connection with the case in over 19 years, noting that he had no other choice than to liberate the accused on the basis of a lack of evidence.

Nazzareno Dalli was on 20 September 2004 charged with using counterfeit Maltese bank notes – Malta was still four years away from switching to the Euro back then – to defraud several fuel stations of less than Lm100.

He was arraigned by then Inspector Ian Abdilla – who later became Assistant Police Commissioner and gained fame for his period as the Head of the Police’s Economic Crimes Unit.  Abdilla was the first – and ultimately only – witness to testify in the case.

Dalli, who was 23 years old at the time, pleaded not guilty to the accusations.

In a sitting in July 2005, the prosecuting inspector Wayne Borg, declared that there were four witnesses still to testify: two police officers, a representative of one of the allegedly defrauded fuel stations, and another person – Adrian Scicluna – who was also facing separate court proceedings.

In February 2006 – after a sitting the previous November where the magistrate noted that “nothing happened” – the prosecution said that the only witness left to testify now was Scicluna, noting however that he did not wish to testify since he had a pending court case against him.

The magistrate said that nothing happened in a sitting in May 2006, and that in October 2006 and February 2007, and September 2007 the prosecution repeated that Scicluna still did not wish to testify as the case against him was still pending.

The magistrate noted that nothing happened in sittings in April 2008, October 2008, January 2009, and May 2009.

In November 2009, the prosecution named a different witness who still had to testify – Manwel Bianchi – but who also did not wish to testify as he too had a pending court case before him.  The declaration was repeated in a sitting in March 2010.

In January 2012, the court warned that since the case had been pending since 2004, the last deferral would be granted before the case is decided.

However a further five sittings followed across 2012 and 2013 before the case was deferred sine die – meaning with no appointed date – in November 2013.

The magistrate says that the case was assigned to him in May 2019, and that in August 2022 he accepted a request from the prosecution for the court to reappoint the case.

In the first sitting after that in November 2022, the prosecution presented the death certificate of Adrian Scicluna and said that it has no further evidence to present in connection with the case.

In January this year, the defendant – now set to celebrate his 42^nd birthday the following month – said that he would testify or offer evidence, and the court resolved to decide on the case after that sitting.

In his sentence, the magistrate said that he couldn’t not remark on the fact that this case is a “classic example of needlessly delayed judicial proceedings where in almost 20  years only one witness (the prosecuting officer himself!) was summoned and where nothing happened other than the repeated litany from the prosecution that the remaining witness didn’t want to testify because he had a pending court case.”

The magistrate noted that if a witness did not want to testify because they have procedures pending against them, then they must decide this before the court itself.

The magistrate also said that he was accepting a request by the defence to erase and not consider the accused’s testimony during the police interrogation as he was not advised that he could be assisted by a lawyer before giving his statement to investigators.

This is because at the time, this wasn’t a requirement by law – such a requirement was only introduced in 2010.

Therefore, the court noted that it only had left Abdilla’s testimony from 2004 where he said that the accused had arrested Dalli along with two others and that Dalli had identified himself in CCTV footage from one of the fuel stations.

“As already stated, the prosecution did not present any further evidence and therefore it is obvious that in these circumstances the court cannot do anything other than liberate the accused on the basis of a lack of proof,” the magistrate said in his sentence.

Dalli was assisted by lawyers Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri.