Magistrate Herrera sends Facebook flowers 'with appreciation and glory' to Lorry Sant henchman Ronnie Pellegrini

If it’s too small for you to read, this is what the text says:

Ronnie got a appreciation and glory from Consuelo Scerri Herrera using FLOWERS OF FRIENDSHIP. January 21 at 6.28am

Those of us who were around in the 1980s know exactly who Ronnie Pellegrini is. We remember him banging on trucks with Lorry Sant, throwing his weight around, and being generally very bad news.

He’s a fine friend for a magistrate and an even finer recipient for a magistrate’s bouquet of ‘appreciation and glory’. Here’s hoping she hasn’t known him from her teenage years, when her father the judge got himself embroiled in a big controversy over land deals that was the subject of an investigation by the Permanent Commission Against Corruption.

“The conclusions of the Permanent Commission against Corruption, presided over by Justice Victor Borg Costanzi, state that “there is no evidence to show that Judge Herrera was involved in any act of corruption in the occasion of the issuing of building permits”.

But the Commission’s report confirms that the late Justice Herrera did confide to a prominent lawyer that Lorry Sant would arrange for him to have permits for development.

The Commission did not stop here. It concluded that permits for the property owned by Justice Herrera could only have been issued by works minister Lorry Sant himself.” – Malta Today, 7 April 2002

And here’s what Malta Today had to say more recently about Magistrate Herrera’s Facebook friend.

Malta Today,29 June 2008

Former Lorry Sant henchman canvasses for Jason Micallef

Ronnie Pellegrini, one of the late Lorry Sant’s henchmen and close personal friends, is Jason Micallef’s chief canvasser for the post of MLP secretary-general. (…..)

Pellegrini was originally a GWU employee, but is seemingly seconded to the Labour Party and is now fully employed by the party. He was one of Alfred Sant’s staunchest supporters, and a common sight at the former MLP leader’s press conferences before the election. (……)

Pellegrini’s notoriety goes back to the days of the late Lorry Sant, the former Labour minister of works who was renowned for his brusque manners and his involvement in numerous corruption accusations.

Among Pellegrini’s initiatives was the decision to erect a statue to the memory of Lorry Sant, even though many in the party did not agree with the idea at the time.