Matthew Vella Generoso Sammut, a 55-year-old shareholder in Eliza Company Ltd, was handed down a 27-month prison sentence, in connection with the theft of 15 paintings from Villa Fiorentina in Attard in 1999, among other offences.
Eliza Company Ltd is the same firm from which PN president Victor Scerri, who resigned abruptly late Tuesday, had bought the plot of Bahrija land, currently at the centre of a political storm.
Norman Zammit, 56, a former Metco chairman who is also an Eliza shareholder had been accused along with Sammut of stealing the paintings, but was later acquitted of the theft due to “lack of evidence”.
They are two of the nine shareholders in Eliza Company Ltd, which purchased the land in Bahrija for €2.5 million from Salvatore Consoli-Palermo-Navarra. However, Zammit has been ordered by a court to pay back Bank of Valletta a €1.9 million loan taken out to buy the land.
When police charged Zammit and Sammut with the Villa Fiorentina art theft, Sammut was already serving a suspended jail term.
A tip-off to the police had led to the recovery of the stolen paintings in a factory in Commerce Street, in Qormi, where Sammut was seen going inside with a camera and a tripod. Sammut was apprehended on leaving the factory. Then assistant commissioner John Rizzo, who was leading the operation, found Norman Zammit in the factory. There they found 14 paintings locked inside a factory room.
Police inspector Pierre Calleja had also told the court that Zammit released a four-page statement in which he admitted his involvement, but that Sammut had refused to reply to questions put to him by the police.
Generoso Sammut has also been found guilty of threatening Labour MP Anglu Farrugia over the phone. Farrugia was the lawyer representing a group of Bahrija farmers, who were being evicted from the land by Eliza Company.
Another of the Bahrija farmers’ lawyers, Toni Abela, had also presented a verbal report to the court claiming that Sammut had threatened to kill him in the law courts.
Sammut was also charged with forgery, along with notary Anthony Agius, a former PN candidate from Qormi, for using false signatures in public acts. Sammut had also attempted to defraud his own sister of their aunt’s inheritance by fabricating a ‘secret will’, claiming he was the sole heir of his aunt’s wealth. Police investigations revealed that Concetta Sammut’s signature on the secret will had not been genuine, and that the will was not authentic.
Still waiting for stolen items The 14 paintings stolen back in 1999 are still in police custody despite having been recovered in a police swoop, a sore point for one of the heirs of the Grungo estate, Mario Grungo.
“We have been to see the paintings once a year to ensure they are still in good condition,” Grungo said of the paintings, which are estimated to be worth thousands of euros. Among them is a painting from the school of Mattia Preti.
“We have tried filing various writs in the law courts, but we have always drawn a blank. The accused were acquitted on lack of evidence. It has always been said that the citizen is robbed first by the criminal, then by the system,” Grungo said.
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