The initial argument

Maz drove to the roadblock to give his employee his tag but a Transport Malta officer immediately noticed Maz’s chameleon tint on his windscreen that’s covered by a medical permit.

Maz suffers from a rare eyesight problem in his right eye called amblyopia which causes him to temporarily lose his eyesight when exposed to direct sunlight. He was born with it and it got worse as he grew older. So in 2021, he secured a permit to put a chameleon window tint on his windshield to protect his eyes. Lovin Malta saw the 2022 permit for the chameleon window tint as well as a confirmation of the diagnosis from the clinic he visits.

According to Maz, as he was explaining his condition and retrieving the permit from his car, the officer got aggressive telling him: “għalaq liba halqek u urini il-permess” (shut your fucking mouth and show me the permit).

Maz consequently got angry, shouted at the officer and started recording him, asking the official for his officer-number which he refused to give. 
The official then called the police to arrest Maz after he shouted at the officer. According to Maz, the official unfoundedly claimed that his life was being threatened by an “Arab man”.

Around seven officers then showed up to the scene, some told Maz to remove the tint but he maintained that he wouldn’t.

“It’s as if I was a criminal,” Maz recounted.

Since he had the necessary permits, he was not arrested.

The TM official with whom the argument broke out then gave Maz a ticket and wrote a mangled number where his identifying officer-number should have been.

Debilitating fines

After the initial altercation, Maz began noticing an influx of parking fines issued on his personal car – most of which were for the tint. After proving the legality of his partial tint several times, his fleet cars – which all share the same numbers on the license plate – also started being targeted by these vexatious tickets.

They started receiving multiple €500 administration fines which would only be discovered once Maz would attempt to renew the license of his vehicles.

These fines are given to cabs when they’re parked on the street outside the legal hours. In most cases, each vehicle had more than one fine registered and many weren’t on the road during those days. In one case, a vehicle had been out of operation for one and a half years when it was fined – this suggests that the ticket was pre-dated.

Maz subsequently organised meetings with his lawyers and the former director of TM and according to the fleet owner, “everything went smoothly”.

However, these fines kept flowing in. 

Maz has received at least 20 administration fines amounting to over €10,000 that he had to pay to keep his business running. To make matters worse, he was not even duly notified of the fines, only learning about them when he’d go to renew the license of his vehicles. Such renewal is blocked until the fine is paid so he unwillingly issued the payments, signing an affidavit confirming this.

Maz has appealed all of the fines and two of the appeals were accepted. One of these fines was given to a car that was not in operation at the time. The other successful appeal involved two officers who put the wrong time on a fine citing illegal parking.

At present, it is illegal for Y-plates to park on the street between midnight and 7am, CCTV cameras caught the officials issuing a fine on his car at 23:47pm but writing 00:50 as the time of the offence.

During spring of this year, Maz held another meeting with officials from TM who said that the restrictions resulting from the administrative fines will be temporarily lifted so that the licenses can be operative again but the vehicles would not be allowed to be transferred onto third parties until it’s all investigated.

This did not happen and at the time of writing, Maz continues to receive or discover new administration fines regularly. More recently he’s also started to get stopped for the tint on the windscreen while driving his personal car, in these last two weeks he got stopped twice while driving past his house.

His personal vehicle has now been called in for its fourth inspection despite allegedly passing the three preceding ones. Lovin Malta saw documentation that Maz passed at least two of these inspections at the Vehicle Inspection Unit.

On both occasions, when he showed the officials the permit for the chameleon tint they called it illegal (despite also being shown a medical report) and issued the fine anyway, according to Maz.

Maz has pled his case several times during meetings with TM officials and via back and forth email correspondence that was seen by Lovin Malta. However, nothing has changed.

Allegations of racism

To add insult to injury, Maz claimed that this treatment is racially motivated. Lovin Malta even spoke to one of his managers who encountered the entity’s alleged discrimination on at least two separate occasions.

The manager, a Maltese driver, recounted a time when he was driving to the Malta International Airport in one of his boss’ cars. He was stopped by TM officials and was asked if he was Libyan. When the manager explained that he wasn’t, the officials continued to probe because they knew the car was registered under a Libyan national, asking for the driver’s license and tag. When the driver’s Maltese nationality was confirmed through identifying documents, they allegedly told him he can go on without being checked implying that they were only checking foreign cab drivers.

Another similar incident happened in Paceville. The same driver claimed to have been stopped by different TM officials who were doing safety and regulatory checks. He was asked if he was Libyan with officials allegedly saying “you don’t seem Libyan, a Libyan guy caused an issue before”.

The driver offered to show the necessary safety provisions in the vehicle but was instead told his vehicle didn’t require inspection because he was Maltese.

Driving him out of Malta

Maz has been living in Malta for over 15 years. He built his company from the bottom-up and employed mostly Maltese drivers, but this treatment has driven him over the edge.

“I can handle challenges, but unfairness is where I draw the line. I like the straight life, I don’t like corruption,” Maz desperately said.

He’s experienced insurmountable anxiety and stress that have completely disrupted his life. If he’s not unwillingly paying a fine after a busy day of work, he’s contesting multiple others – this situation has consumed all free time and thought that he had before.

Despite the exhaustion this campaign against him has caused, Maz has denied any alleged attempt by officials at bribing him to resolve the situation.

Maz is seriously considering leaving the island because of these vexatious fines he likened to mafia tactics.

“This is abuse, this is not acceptable. I’m done with this game.”

Maz will now be selling his personal car, initiating legal action against TM and will probably leave Malta next year.

No response to the newsroom

Lovin Malta has reached out to TM on multiple occasions through an official Maz is in regular contact with and through the CEO Kurt Farrugia. However, the newsroom is yet to receive a response on these allegations.

Lovin Malta was able to speak to a former TM official who was involved in this case and they said that all their reports and findings were submitted duly to the respective authority within Transport Malta. This person did not divulge what the findings consisted of.

According to Maz, the issuing of administration fines have increased since the newsroom contacted the authority. However, now, they began notifying him of the fines by sending mail to his place of work.

One arrived to Maz’s letter box on the 20th November but was registered as sent on the 21st, the day after. And just days ago, he received another €500 fine on a car he said he sold two years ago.

Have you ever experienced something similar perpetrated by Transport Malta? If so, contact [email protected]