Time-barred case leaves unlucky migrants without their cash

Luck and time ran out on Filipino nationals Jennyvie Antiproda Bartolome and Joescepcion Alterado Edu when the Court ruled that they had made their claim for allegedly misappropriated funds too late.

Bartolome claimed she lost her house due to the debt she accumulated in order to transfer Maltese national Elena Falzon the sum €9434.89, in preparation of her move to Malta and later to Italy.

Bartolome claimed that in 2005 she transferred the sum to Falzon, whom she knew through the mutual acquaintance of Falzon's relatives in Messina, Sicily.

But the money was withdrawn by Falzon and as time went by, Bartolome received no news concerning her move to Malta. Both her attempts and those of Falzon's Italian relative to contact Falzon failed.

Her expected migration in 2005 failed. Then in 2009, she managed to arrive to Malta. After the arrival of her co-national in 2011, she finally located Elena Falzon.

Bartolome's lawyer tried to recuperate the money through legal letters to Elena Falzon, and when this failed he filed an application at the Court of Magistrates. However Bartolome's tribulations were far from over.

In 2012, Falzon appeared in Court and affirmed that in 2005 she had received Lm3,000 (€7,400) from Bartolome. She said she was asked to send that sum to the Sacsac family in Messina, whom she had known through her sister-in-law.

Falzon said she was not aware why Bartolome had decided to use her as an intermediary in the transaction, although the Sacsac family had explained to her that they could not receive money transfers in Sicily.

Falzon however stated that she personally travelled to Sicily to hand over the money to the Sacsac family, an amount she said was less than that claimed by Bartolome. The Sacsacs had told her that she would get a receipt, which never materialised.

Magistrate Consuelo-Pilar Scerri Herrera found that both parties agreed that Bartolome had voluntarily transferred the money to Falzon, who was never charged nor ever found criminally guilty of fraud. The disagreement consisted in the reason for the transfer. Without a criminal case, the Civil Court could not accept fraud as a reason to revoke the five-year time limit on filing the case.

Furthermore Bartolome had chosen not to pursue the option of legal proceedings by proxy and waited until she was in Malta to file legal proceedings. This happened outside the five-year time-frame accepted by the Civil Court.

The Magistrate declared that Bartolome's claim was time-barred and ordered Jennyvie Antiproda Bartolome and her niece Joescepcion Alterado Edu to pay the legal expenses for the case.