Joe Sammut had been fired by the Central Bank of Malta in 1992

Published: August 20, 2015 at 9:59am
Joe Sammut in a photograph taken last year during a graduation ceremony of an online outfit called SMC University, where he is listed as a 'professor in the Department of Accounting and Finance"

Joe Sammut in a photograph taken last year during a graduation ceremony of an online outfit called SMC University, where he is listed as a ‘professor in the Department of Accounting and Finance”

Joe Sammut, the corrupt accountant currently facing trial for fraud, falsifying information and money-laundering in the incorporation of brass-plate companies which allowed 850 Libyan citizens and their families to obtain residence visas in Malta, was kicked out of his job at the Central Bank in June 1992. He was an assistant executive there.

In February 1993, an industrial tribunal ruled that he had been sacked unjustly, and ordered the Central Bank to pay him Lm5,000 (€12,000) in compensation.

Not content with this, in August 1993 Sammut sued the Central Bank for a “gratuity” of one month’s salary for every year he had worked there.

The case trundled through the Civil Courts for nine years until Judge Tonio Mallia ruled in 2002 that the Central Bank must pay Joe Sammut Lm6,654.93 (€16,000) “gratuity” and any other allowances he may have been owed, after he was fired, in terms of the bank’s collective agreement with employees.

The judge also ordered the Central Bank to pay Sammut petrol and telephone allowances and his sick leave between June and September 1992. He had been fired in June. Sammut had sued on the basis that he was owed this money under the collective agreement.

In the light of what has transpired since, it is more than clear that the governor and board of the Central Bank were completely correct in getting rid of Joe Sammut, even if they did not have the cast-iron basis to justify their decision before the industrial tribunal.