Suspended sentence for Darren Debono ‘it-Topo’ over perjury, fabricating evidence

Darren Debono ‘it-Topo’ has been handed a suspended sentence after he admitted to perjury and fabricating evidence.

Debono, who has a number of previous convictions for armed robbery and who had been reportedly shot in the mouth whilst participating in a failed bank robbery in 2007, pleaded guilty to charges of judicial perjury, giving false evidence and fabricating evidence between 2000 and 2003.

He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment suspended for four.

Together with the suspended sentence, magistrate Ian Farrugia also placed Debono under a 20-year general interdiction.

Debono had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in 2013 after he was convicted of carrying out a hold up at an Attard jewellers in 2011. Before that, also in 2011, he had been jailed for two years and nine months, having been found in possession of 83 grammes of cocaine in 2003. He is also currently accused of carrying out another hold up at HSBC in Qormi in June 2010. The proceedings in that case are understood to still be ongoing.

In 2015, together with Alfred Degiorfio ‘il-Fulu’, and Vincent Muscat ‘il-Kohhu’, Debono had been cleared of the 2004 armed robbery of a Valhmor Borg employee in Marsa.