“I’ll be back with my brother to finish you off” – Sandro Chetcuti to Vince Farrugia

Robert Chetcuti

Sandro Chetcuti

This makes more sense now. Four years ago, it was reported that as Malta Developers Association president Sandro Chetcuti was pulled off Vince Farrugia, secretary-general of the General Retailers and Traders Union, after assaulting him in the latter’s office, he shouted, “I’ll be back with my brother to finish you off.”

The brother in question is Robert Chetcuti, a nightclub bouncer. I remember thinking at the time how odd it was, that a grown man should still be thinking and operating in schoolyard terms, swaggering round and calling his bully brother to beat up the other boys who he couldn’t beat up alone.

There had already been a case which ended up in court a few months before that (link to newspaper report below), in which Sandro Chetcuti got into a massive fight with his host at a first holy communion party, and the fight spilled over to his own home, where in the ensuing melee, in which he was surrounded by an angry crowd, he said he thought he was going to be killed.

He rang his brother Robert for help and Robert turned up and began assaulting people with a piece of wood, ending up arrested and charged by the police. He was acquitted by Magistrate Herrera, a close friend of his brother Sandro, on the grounds that he had acted in self-defence.