Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1196490
17 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 29 DECEMBER 2019 NEWS Drugs Jordan Azzopardi Drug kingpin Jordan Azzo- pardi and his 31-year old girl- friend, whose name was banned from publication under court order, were arrested in March on drugs and fraud charges. Malta was captivated by the case of Azzopardi, who had transformed his illegal drug trade into a well-oiled crimi- nal machine, with witnesses testifying to a garage used for illegal transactions being fitted out with metal barricades and security features, as well as vats of acid to dispose of evidence in case of a police raid. Azzopardi has been in police custody since his arrest. The woman has been out on bail since August 2. She is currently pleading not guilty to criminal conspiracy, fraudulently circulating fake bank notes and defrauding three stores in San Gwann and Sliema, along with her boy- friend who is also charged with drug trafficking. Rape 2019 was also the year that brought the occult and the ob- scene into court in a big way, with a case of an 18-year-old Cospicua resident, who can- not be named on the orders of the court, who was accused of the rape of a vulnerable woman – the mother of his 15 year- old girlfriend – as well as with causing her and another vul- nerable woman – her daughter – to perform sexual acts against their will, violent indecent as- sault on a person who was un- able to resist, holding the wom- en against their will and forcing them to perform acts contrary to their decency, slightly injur- ing them. The media frenzy surround- ing that case petered out, how- ever, after a court-appointed exorcist reported in October that he had seen nothing spirit- ually troubling in several prayer visits to the family home. Seydon Bandango A 20-year jail sentence for Burkinan national Seydon Ban- dango, who was found guilty yesterday of having raped an Italian girl in Pembroke three years ago was handed down following a trial by jury in Sep- tember. Another man, Nigerian na- tional Emmanuel Ngumezi, was found not guilty in con- nection with the same case. Ju- rors reached their verdict after six hours of deliberation at the end of a seven-day trial with evidence being given behind closed doors. Bandango of Burkina Faso and Ngumezi of Nigeria had been charged with kidnapping an Italian girl from St George's Bay in July of 2016, bundling her into a car and raping her in Pembroke. The jury heard how Po- lice had gone on site and had found one of the accused na- ked from the waist down in the car near the victim, who had been crying and calling for help. The other man, who was found not guilty of rape, but guilty of abduction, was out- side the car and had fled when he spotted the Police officers. Ngumezi was jailed for 5 years and one month for his part in the crime. Man admits to participat- ing in gang rape of Italian girl to avoid jury trial Libyan Hussein Mohamud, a 32-year-old Somali national, was jailed for eight and a half years in July after he pleaded guilty to the abduction and gang rape of an Italian woman six years ago. The incident had taken place in March 2013, when the 21-year-old Italian woman had been walking towards Val- letta. At one point a car, with four men inside it, had pulled up. The men grabbed her off the street and pushed her into the car. When she had tried to escape, one of the men had grabbed her by the throat and started to choke her, saying "Italiano tu sei morto" ("Ital- ian you are dead"). The victim was raped multiple times at Hal Far. Mohamud pleaded guilty to avoid a trial by jury. Fraud A Ponzi scheme involving the daughters of former politician John Dalli and 75-year-old Ma- rie Eloise Corbyn Klein, first reported by assassinated jour- nalist Daphne Caruana Galizia back in 2015, hit the headlines this year. The scheme was al- legedly run by Corbin Klein, who operated under a number of aliases. The woman was later investigated by the FBI for hav- ing allegedly scammed Ameri- cans out of some $600,000 by posing as a Christian mission- ary and convincing them to in- vest their savings into an Afri- can mining project. Instead the money was fun- nelled into two Maltese compa- nies – Tyre Ltd and Corporate Group – owned by Louise Dalli and Claire Gauci Borda, Dalli's two daughters, and which are registered at John Dalli's home address in Portomaso. They pleaded not guilty to money laundering and misappropria- tion charges. Patrick Spiteri Patrick Spiteri, a disbarred former lawyer and alleged fraudster, has seen his plans to go abroad whilst on bail - os- tensibly for work purposes - re- duced to naught. Spiteri came to within spitting distance of release on remarkably lax bail conditions in September only to have it wrenched from his grasp barely two weeks later when an appeals court said it was not assured that Spiteri would return to Malta if he were to be permitted to travel. Duncan Buttigieg Notorious fraudster Duncan Buttigieg enjoyed a rare de- cision in his favour, seeing a 30-month prison sentence re- duced by six months on appeal in September after a court ruled that, while he had committed fraud, he had not committed the crime of unjustified enrich- ment Theft Fr Deo Debono, the former parish priest of the Augustin- ian parish in Valletta, was given a two-year prison sentence, suspended for four years, after admitting to theft of artworks from his convent. He was also ordered to pay €9,500 in damages to the per- son who bought the artworks without knowing that they were stolen. The magistrate who heard much of the case behind closed doors, ruled that there was "an element of humiliation and blackmail" to the case, in hand- ing down punishment. Migrants at sea 2019 saw two very extreme cases of migrants in distress at sea. In the first, the captain of the rescue vessel MV Lifeline was arrested and eventually fined €10,000 for registration anomalies. Captain Claus Pe- ter Reisch had been in charge of the vessel when it rescued 234 stranded migrants at sea in 2018. The rescue had caused an international dispute, with the Lifeline eventually being allowed to dock in Valletta, af- ter which the rescued migrants were distributed amongst a number of EU countries. He has filed an appeal. On 28 March 2019, three teenage asylum-seekers – one from Ivory Coast, aged 15, and two from Guinea, aged 16 and 19 – were arrested over the hijack of the El Hiblu 1, a mer- chant vessel which had rescued them in the central Mediterra- nean along with over a hundred other refugees and migrants, to prevent the captain from taking them back to Libya and hand- ing them over to Libyan au- thorities. Maltese authorities charged the three youths with a series of grave offences, including under counter-terrorism legislation, some punishable with life im- prisonment. They have denied any wrongdoing. Lorin Scicluna and Franceso Fenech were accused of murdering Lassane Cisse (right)