Court orders Stagno Navarra to pay his lawyer’s bills

Labour propagandist Karl Stagno Navarra was found guilty of not paying his lawyer for services and was ordered to pay over €3,500 in unsettled bills without further delay.

In its judgment, the Small Claims Tribunal found that despite various promises, including through voice and text messages, Stagno Navarra never paid his dues to his lawyer, Jean-Paul Sammut.

The ONE TV presenter, known for a series of similar cases spanning over two decades, faced a court case filed by his own lawyer following several warnings.

The Court found that Stagno Navarra never paid for the services he procured, but the Court did not accept a new bill, presented by the lawyer, claiming over €1,000 in interest accrued over the money owed.

According to the Court, this new bill issued by Sammut, a former CEO of companies related to Charles Polidano, known as Ic-Caqnu, was never notified to the Labour propagandist and should not be charged to him.

During the case, which Stagno Navarra didn’t even defend, Sammut said that in addition to various legal services that he provided to Stagno Navarra, he had also forked out money to third parties on Stagno Navarra’s behalf for which Sammut was never paid.

The Court’s summons against Stagno Navarra listed his address as the Labour Party HQ in Hamrun and ONE TV’s complex in Marsa.

The former PN cheerleader who switched to Labour in 2013 and was welcomed with open arms by disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat has accumulated a very long list of similar cases.

In June 2021, Magistrate Rachel Montebello ordered the Labour presenter to pay €7,303 to Managing Consulting Services Industry Ltd for failing to settle various bills related to cleaning his rented apartment.

The company told the court that Stagno Navarra always admitted that he had accumulated debts but never paid up.

A few years earlier, in July 2017, Magistrate Josette Demicoli ordered the Labour propagandist to pay €42,900 to LCL Investment Ltd for dues on the rental of a penthouse in St Julian’s that Stagno Navarra was using as his residence.

Stagno Navarra, who entered into a contract to pay €2,500 a month in rent, failed to pay his dues. The magistrate had also declared Stagno Navarra a squatter and ordered him out of the rented premises.

Once derided by Labour supporters for his bombastic reporting style when serving in the PN newsroom, Stagno Navarra switched sides when it was clear the Labour Party would be returned to power. A few years earlier, he had been kicked out of the PN following accusations of fraud made against him by different companies.

After a short stint working for Saviour Balzan at Malta Today, he was kept on Labour’s propaganda payroll at ONE TV and given several other government jobs, first at Malta Enterprise and then at Air Malta. He was also given second jobs through ‘consultancies’ by the Office of the Prime Minister and at Transport Malta.

Now, Stagno Navarra is employed at the Occupational Health and Safety Authority, supposedly working in communications, although his colleagues say they never see him.

Meanwhile, he continues his propaganda programme on the Labour Party’s station, where even his bio is a fraud in which he paints a picture of himself as some war correspondent having worked in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In reality, Al Jazeera dumped him, as did all other newsrooms in Malta that employed him, except for the Labour Party’s TV station, where he uses his programme to attack government critics.