Woman held on remand at Corradino Prison because of old European arrest warrant for a €2,000 private debt from 10 years ago

Published: January 5, 2017 at 9:50pm

This is a shocking story. And I honestly can’t understand why the newspaper hasn’t put it into its proper perspective. The headline makes the woman look like a wanted, hunted criminal.

Under Maltese law, you cannot be jailed for private debts. They are entirely a civil matter. If X owes Y money but fails to pay, the police do not get involved. They can’t, because owing somebody money and failing to pay it is not a crime, unless there is fraud involved – but in that case, the crime is the fraud and not the debt itself.

And yet here is this poor woman, who under who knows what Godforsaken system in Slovakia has had a European arrest warrant issued against her because she owes somebody a mere €2,000 there. It was a civil debt, confirmed by a ruling of a Slovakian court in 2008, but she left Slovakia before she paid it.

She spent five years in London, where the British police obviously never acted on the European arrest warrant, but now came over to Malta to visit her daughter for the New Year, and was nabbed on arrival by the zealous Maltese police, acting on a European arrest warrant for a CIVIL debt of three times the sum of just one of the Economy Minister’s minibar bills.

And to make matters more horrific still, she has been denied bail and is now locked up at Corradino prisons on remand, pending removal to Slovakia. It would have been easier and cheaper all round, and less traumatic for all, to just pay her stupid debt – but there’s no mechanism for that.

Meanwhile, back home on the ranch in Malta, no European arrest warrant has been issued for Ryan Schembri, a first cousin to the Prime Minister’s shady chief of staff, Keith Schembri (their fathers are brothers), even though he fled Malta having defrauded many people of millions of euros.

Keith Schembri: his first cousin Ryan Schembri, another fraudster, fled Malta having cheated many people of millions of euros, and has since ‘disappeared’. But Malta has issued no European arrest warrant for him.

Ryan Schembri – rumoured to be in Dubai, a favourite hot-spot for his cousin Keith. European arrest warrants are useless in Dubai, but issuing one will prevent this fraudster moving anywhere in Europe.