Former Labour MP in benefits racket has freezing order reduced to €4.5 million in assets

The Court of Magistrates has imposed new limits on the amount of assets frozen against former Labour MP Silvio Grixti and four other defendants charged with theft and misappropriation in the benefits fraud case.

The court of Magistrate Rachel Montebello issued decrees on the assets to be seized and frozen in the charges against Grixti, and co-conspirators Roger Agius, Emanuel Spagnol, Dustin Caruana and Luke Saliba in the €6 million racket of disability benefit fraud.

The court ordered a total of €4.5 million in assets to be frozen Grixti's case. Agius’s frozen assets were limited to €60,000; Spagnol’s at €90,000; Caruana's at €153,000, and Saliba's at €47,000.

These amounts will be subject to confiscation in the case of a conviction. The variations came in the wake of the freezing order issued back in April 2024, when the court froze all monies and other movable or immovable property belonging to the accused.

In March, Silvio Grixti, a medical doctor and former Labour MP, and four others, Roger Agius, Emmanuel Spagnol, Dustin Caruana and Luke Saliba, had been charged with setting up and forming part of a criminal organisation, defrauding the Department of Social Security of an amount in excess of €5,000 and forging official documents.

The men are also accused of forging public documents and knowingly making use of them, making a false declaration to the public authorities and possession of items intended to be used for fraudulent purposes, as well as a separate charge of money laundering.

Grixti is accused of having provided applicants with medical certificates for disabilities which they did not suffer from in reality, allowing them to qualify for the allowance, after appearing before a medical board.

The police accuse Agius, Spagnol, Caruana and Saliba of having acted as intermediaries, who collected payments from the fraudulent beneficiaries.

A detailed list of the beneficiaries found on Grixti’s laptop, were grouped by their link to the different defendants, together with records of the amounts Grixti had received and the totals paid out by the Social Security Department to the fraudulent beneficiaries.

Further names to those discovered on Grixti’s laptop, were found detailed in handwritten ledgers which the police recovered from Emmanuel Spagnol’s home, according to the testimony of police inspectors. Spagnol and Grixti had split the takings, a court was told.