A court has dismissed a series of preliminary objections raised by the defence of several accused individuals and companies in the Kasco-linked money laundering case.

The court ruled the charges brought against them are not time-barred and may proceed.

The case involves multiple defendants, including Alfio Schembri, Malcolm Scerri, Keith Schembri, and Robert Zammit, as well as a number of companies connected to the Kasco group and other corporate entities registered in Malta and abroad. The alleged offences span a period between 2005 and 2019 and concern activities said to have taken place both within and outside Malta.

The prosecution has brought thirteen charges covering a range of alleged criminal conduct.

Central among these is an accusation of money laundering against all the accused, involving the alleged conversion, concealment, and use of property suspected to derive from criminal activity.

Other charges include criminal association, accounting-related offences involving allegedly false or incomplete records, fraud against entities such as Progress Press Company Limited and Malta Enterprise, corruption in the private sector, false declarations to authorities including tax-related omissions, forgery, the use of forged documents, and perjury.

One charge also concerns alleged professional misconduct by Robert Zammit in his capacity as an accountant or auditor.

Before the case could proceed to a full hearing, the defence raised a series of preliminary objections, arguing that several of the charges should be dismissed because they had become time-barred under Maltese law.

The defence maintained that the applicable prescriptive periods should be calculated based on the original punishment attached to each offence and should not be extended by the prosecution’s classification of the alleged conduct as a “continuous offence.”

They further argued that the authorities had knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing as early as 2017, when a notitia criminis was filed, and that prescription should therefore be calculated from that earlier point in time.

The court addressed these arguments in detail. It accepted the defence’s position on one legal point, holding that for the purposes of prescription the relevant time limits must indeed be based on the ordinary punishment of the offence, rather than any increased penalty resulting from its classification as a continuous offence. However, the court rejected the broader argument that the charges had expired.

A central issue was determining when the prescriptive period began to run. The court concluded that the case is of a particularly complex nature, involving multiple individuals, corporate structures, and financial transactions.

In light of this complexity, it held the authorities could not be considered to have had sufficient knowledge of both the alleged offences and the identity of the perpetrators at the earlier stage suggested by the defence.

Instead, the court found that the relevant starting point for prescription was the conclusion of the magisterial inquiry, marked by the issuance of the process verbal on 1 March 2021.

It reasoned that only at that stage could the prosecution be said to have acquired the necessary knowledge to proceed with criminal charges. The accused were subsequently arraigned on 22 March 2021, a short time after the conclusion of the inquiry.

Applying this timeline, the court examined each of the contested charges and found that the applicable prescriptive periods had not elapsed. Whether the offences carried shorter or longer prescription periods under the law, the time between the conclusion of the inquiry and the arraignment was insufficient for any of the charges to be extinguished.

The court therefore rejected all the relevant preliminary objections relating to prescription.

Two objections were not considered, as they had been withdrawn by the defence prior to the decision.

The ruling does not address the merits of the allegations and does not determine whether the accused are guilty or innocent. Its effect is procedural, confirming that the charges in question remain valid and that the case may proceed.

The proceedings are expected to continue, with the court set to move on to further stages involving the examination of evidence and testimony while the defence is set to appeal the court’s decision.

The Criminal Court was presided over by Judge Giovanni M Grixti.

Clarification: A previous version of this article wrongly stated that the court decided that the case could proceed to trial. This has now been corrected.