Conman Spiteri fails attempt for €1.5 million retrial

A request by the disbarred lawyer Patrick Spiteri to have an appeal against an order to return €1.5 million heard again by a new court, has been thrown out.

The decision was handed down by an appeals court, that pointed out numerous legal errors in Spiteri’s request for a retrial, ordering him to pay the double fees and costs for the original appeal, with an added €800.

“Spiteri’s action for a rehearing of his appeals case was totally vexatious,” the appeals court, presided by Mr Justice Robert Mangion, said. “It is clear in the manner this action was worded that he is trying to find any excuse under the sun to wrangle a retrial. This is a weak attempt that has led to nowhere. Considering that this case has been dragging on since 2003, and that Spiteri has already been condemned to pay double his original fees and expenses, it is only fair that this is again reflected in the expenses for this court case.”

Originally, an appeals court in August 2022 dismissed Spiteri’s request to overturn a 2016 judgment condemning him to return over €1.5 million to a British, former solicitor who entrusted him with the cash back in 1998. The court, presided by Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti, ruled Spiteri’s appeal against conviction frivolous and vexatious, ordering him to suffer double costs.

Stuart Creggy filed the claim in 2003, accusing Spiteri of refusing to return the cash he was supposed to invest for him. Spiteri was expected to invest the €1.5 million transferred to him from Creggy’s Swiss bank account. Creggy had been arrested in June 1998 in the UK, over an international investigation into a $17 million investment share fraud, run from New York.

Creggy himself was subsequently convicted of money-laundering offences in 2007, receiving a suspended term of imprisonment of 18 months and £900,000 fine.

Creggy, who submitted his evidence in the form of an affidavit, said Spiteri was the director of his offshore company Cuzon Limited, which he used to hold the funds from the sale of a £122,000 property. The money was transferred to Spiteri’s law firm’s bank account.

In 2001, diagnosed with leukaemia, Creggy met Spiteri while in Washington DC, instructing him to return his funds. “He replied that he had deposited my funds in Switzerland in a clients’ account... that he would need some considerable time to organise payments to me. I was rather surprised by this statement since one is to presume that clients’ funds, particularly if they are of a substantial value, should be kept in separate accounts and not moved without my consent,” Creggy said in his affidavit.

Spiteri denied the claims, but it was only after 2017 that he was finally cross-examined in a Maltese court after his extradition from London. He claimed the monies were now held by third parties he identified as UK residents Ethel Imber Lithman, Adela Lithman, David Diamond and a certain “E F Falougi of Empire Ltd”, and Shai Granot from Israel.

Although he requested a summons for 20 foreign witnesses, Spiteri failed to complete the requisite legal formalities to do so. The appeals court said it was “off-key” for him to complain of having been deprived of the right to summon witnesses when he had failed to make use of the procedure applicable to his circumstances.

Spiteri is still facing fraud and misappropriation charges in a €7.4 million case dating back 20 years. He was arrested in Surrey, England in 2016 and extradited to Malta. Spiteri was eventually granted bail on several conditions, amongst them that he does not leave the Maltese islands.

In October 2022, Spiteri was condemned to serve two years in jail for defrauding Leslie Bricusse, the double Oscar winner and international composer – who died at 90 in 2021 – of £150,000.