Opinion: Facts and insinuations

Christian Borg was accused of perjury at the request of Magistrate Gabriella Vella. But he was acquitted because the police didn’t bother presenting the transcript of his alleged false testimony.

The court had no option but to acquit him. It didn’t even know what falsehoods Borg had allegedly uttered, thanks to our amazing police force.

It seems the police hoped nobody would notice. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that the accused have been let off because of police errors—the wrong date, year, name, address, or time on the charge sheet.

You might brush it off as another of our police force’s fiascos, yet another of their comically incompetent blunders – until you realise Christian Borg is not your average petty criminal.

Borg was involved in a stinking deal with the prime minister himself, a deal Robert Abela has been at pains to bury.  Every time that “small plot in Zabbar” is mentioned, Abela flies into hysterical panic.  Borg knows far too much about Robert Abela.

Now Borg has racked up a catalogue of criminal charges, including a shocking kidnapping in which Borg and his henchmen beat up a man, threatened to cut off his fingers and rape his sister.

Borg was also charged with money laundering, tax fraud, criminal conspiracy, evading income tax and VAT, defrauding the tax commissioner and making fraudulent gains to the government’s detriment.

It wasn’t just a few thousand Borg allegedly stole – he defrauded millions through six of his companies.  The man is currently out on bail with a €35,000 deposit and a personal guarantee of €60,000.

The prosecution wanted his assets frozen, but thanks to Labour’s latest criminal-friendly legislation, “the specific amount to be frozen would be indicated by the prosecution within 90 days”. That’s more than enough time to move every asset in his name.

Bank of Valletta terminated all relationships with Borg in 2023, closing all his accounts.  His car rental licence was suspended by Transport Malta, which received “numerous, repeated and extremely serious complaints of malpractice from clients” who hired a car from Borg’s Goldcar venture.

The international franchise Goldcar cut all ties with Borg and his companies because of the serious damage Borg caused to their reputation. Borg’s swindling of tourists was even reported in The London Times Business section under the title, ‘Vehicle hire cowboys Goldcar blew holes in our holiday budgets’.

Another of Borg’s companies, No Deposit Cars, was found by the courts to have issued fraudulently used car sale contracts.  When one customer returned his defective car, he was still forced to pay the full sum, and Borg then sold the same vehicle to another customer.

When another duped customer complained about the faulty car Borg had sold him, Borg offered to exchange it for another defective car. When the customer sought a cash refund, Borg allegedly subjected her to threats and intimidation.

The court ruled that Borg was well aware that he was selling faulty cars and that the contracts of sale prevented customers from complaining about any “latent” defects in the vehicles they’d purchased. The court found Borg’s company “continued unnecessarily bothering and harming its client”.

Despite being arraigned in January 2022 for a range of offences, including kidnapping, Robert Abela’s government awarded Borg a lucrative contract worth €150,000 to lease 26 cars to the Local Enforcement Systems Agency (LESA) just months later.

Borg was already supplying another 41 cars to Transport Malta with a lease value of €200,000. Borg was also identified as the preferred bidder to provide the judiciary with 50 vehicles.  The tender was only halted after vociferous opposition by members of the judiciary who refused to be driven around in cars belonging to a man charged with such serious crimes. Abela’s government was forced to cancel Borg’s multi-million-euro tender.

After he was charged, Borg kept his shareholding in his companies – and the associated profits – but handed directorship to Joe Camenzuli, the former official Labour Party photographer and associate of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat.

Since then, Borg has made headlines after he took over a car park leased to Santa Luċija football club subsidised by Abela’s government.  Borg is using that car park to store hundreds of his Princess Holdings rental vehicles.

That land was leased by government to the football club solely for sports activities.  SportMalta confirmed that Borg was acting illegally but Abela’s government took no action against him.

How did this young, unskilled, unqualified man amass millions of euro in assets? How could Borg have bought multiple high-end properties, including a luxury penthouse with a rooftop pool and a massive Mellieħa villa, without a bank loan or any withdrawals?

How did this man possess a Ferrari 458 and a top-of-the-line Range Rover SUV? More pertinent is why this man paid Robert Abela €45,000?

In June 2018, Robert and Lydia Abela agreed to buy a Zabbar plot from Bonnici Brothers and Simon Buhagiar. Strangely, Borg had applied for a development permit on that very plot in November 2017, despite ostensibly having absolutely no link to that land.

Yet on the very day that the Planning Authority issued the development permit for nine apartments and garages on that plot, its value suddenly shot up and the Abelas entered into the promise of sale agreement.

Just weeks later, the Abelas sold their stake in the plot to Borg earning a handsome €45,000 profit.  What’s even more fishy is that Abela was the legal advisor to Christian Borg, the Bonnici Brothers and the Planning Authority at the time.

No wonder Abela gets so hot under the collar when anybody mentions that “small Żabbar plot”.  No wonder the police are making such ridiculous “mistakes” in Borg’s prosecution. Of course, these are only insinuations.  Just ask Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa.