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Seven men and two women were charged on Wednesday with customs fraud and corruption following a sting operation led by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Six customs officials, three customs staff and two companies were charged on Wednesday with crimes including customs fraud, active and passive corruption of public officials, participation in a criminal organization and money laundering.
This is the first action brought by the EPO in Malta.
Those charged on Wednesday evening are Jonathan Mizzi, 49, of Attard; Greta Mizzi, 46, of Attard; Otman Ali Otman Abdulkader, 44, a Libyan national holding an Antigua and Barbuda passport and living in St. Julian’s; Duncan Mangion, 47, of Fgura; Carmel Busuttil, 55, of Luqa; Timothy Galea, 45, of Naxxar; Jonathan Theuma, 47, of Żurrieq; Edward Mifsud, 54, of Rabat; and Marika Bugeja, 51, of Rabat.
The companies accused are Akakus International Limited and Convey Shipping & Trading Agency Ltd, represented by Abdulkader and Greta Mizzi respectively.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office said The case involves an alleged fraud case of evading customs duties on clothing, bags, shoes and other goods imported from China by under-declaring their value and weight. These actions were allegedly carried out with the collusion of customs officials who are believed to have received bribes to evade the proper performance of their duties.
It is understood that these illegal activities began in December 2021 and stopped in July 2023, when eight suspects were arrested at the request of the European Criminal Prosecutor’s Office. It is estimated that these activities caused losses of more than 15.9 million euros to the Maltese state budget and more than 7.6 million euros to the EU budget.
In the early stages of this investigation, and in order to recover losses incurred by the EU and national budgets, Europrosecutor’s Office seized property worth €6 million and 195 containers of goods with a total value of €5.8 million, as well as vehicles, luxury goods and €170,000 in cash. Europrosecutor’s Office is supported by the Financial Crime Investigation Unit of the Malta Police Service, the Malta Customs and VAT Department and the Malta Asset Recovery Agency.
The Mizzis, Abdulkader and two companies were each charged with fraud exceeding €100,000, affecting EU budget funds, obtaining fraudulent proceeds, and other fraud exceeding €5,000, to the detriment of the Maltese government.
Jonathan Mizzi and Abdulkader were each charged with bribing a customs official, forgery of an official document, and knowingly using a false document and making a false declaration.
As public officials, Mangion, Busuttil, Galia, Touma, Mifsud and Bugaja were also charged with fraud, accepting bribes and embezzlement of public funds.
The Mizis and Abdulkader were also each charged with making false tax declarations specifically to evade customs duties and other taxes on merchandise in 31 shipping containers.
All have pleaded not guilty.
The prosecutor informed the court that in 2022 and 2023, Malta participated in Operation Octopus, which targeted goods imported from third countries. Many of the goods were falsely declared to be from Taiwan, but in fact they came from China.
We found several containers with false declarations.
The import business was handled by a company registered under the name Greta Mizzi, but investigators believed that Jonathan Mizzi was the real operator. About 50 containers were imported each week, mainly for transshipment to the European Union.
EPPO officials Geoffrey Azzopardi and Martin Sammut brought the case together with inspector Joseph Xerri. Lawyers Franco Debono, Adreana Zammit, Arthur Azzopardi, Ishmael Psaila, Alfred Abela, Michael Sciriha and Roberto Spiteri acted as defence counsel.
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