Drug trafficker with unexplained security licence also on bail for tying up and robbing pensioner in his home

A private security guard who got his licence despite being a convicted drug trafficker also has a pending criminal case for breaking into a pensioner’s home disguised as a worker from a telecommunications company, tying him up, injuring him and ransacking his home.

Tano [Gaetano] Farrugia and two others are charged with and are currently undergoing court proceedings for posing as telephone company representatives to gain access to an elderly man’s home in Mosta in May 2019 to rob him.

Farrugia– along with alleged accomplices Roderick Zahra and Braden Grixti – are facing charges of aggravated theft, illegal arrest and causing slight injury during the robbery.

The 66-year-old victim was slightly injured when the men broke into his home pretending to be telecommunications workers. They allegedly tied the pensioner up and ransacked his home but found nothing worth stealing and left empty-handed.

Farrugia’s lawyer in the case is Mario Mifsud, the brother of Magistrate Joe Mifsud. The magistrate’s brother defending Farrugia is also the lawyer for the Corradino Correctional Facility, as well as a soldier.

Farrugia’s case resumes on 27 February.

At the time of the charges, in June 2019, Farrugia was an engineering company employee, according to court documents. By at least April 2022 he was working as a private security guard, meaning he had presumably been issued with his questionable licence in the interim.

This new information reaching The Shift exposes further holes in the private guard licencing system, which requires a clean bill of criminal conduct, on which the police commissioner is not answering questions.

Security guard licences are issued by the police.

Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa has been asked by The Shift to explain how a former footballer imprisoned in Tunisia in 2010 after being caught with 50kg of cannabis resin has been licensed as a private security guard, but he has so far only claimed data protection restrictions, saying the information would be investigated.

Farrugia had been convicted of drug trafficking in Tunisia and sentenced to 20 years but was released on an amnesty given in celebration of the country’s Arab Spring uprising.

He is now, however, working as a private security guard, although the police licence required to work in the field requires a background check and a clean criminal conduct.

Two and a half years after being charged with the heinous crime, Farrugia was on a televised charity fundraiser stage, cheque in hand, in April 2022 – in a private security guard uniform accompanying his employer who was making a donation.

When contacted by The Shift, CAMC Security Ltd managing director Catalin Azzopardi first attempted to play the issue down by explaining that all the company’s guards are covered by licences issued by the Police Commissioner.

But when confronted about Farrugia’s criminal record, Azzopardi insisted that Farrugia was not employed with the company, despite photographs of Farrugia wearing the company uniform and accompanying him as he made a donation to Puttinu Cares.