‘He Kept Saying Tomorrow’: Maltese Man Smacked With €900 In Roadside Offences After Buyer Failed To Transfer Ownership
Retiree Paul Vella and his wife, Yan Yan, have been plunged into chaos after receiving €900 in traffic fines and risk losing their driving license for offences committed after their car was sold.
The car, which was registered under Yan Yan’s name before the sale, had been sold to its new owner last January. But in light of the couple’s health struggles, which include disability, Paul left it in the good hands of the new owner to transfer the ownership under his name.
But after a series of contraventions were mailed to their doorstep in the following months, tallying up to no less than €900, some serious questions were raised about whether the transfer had indeed been completed.
“I was very ill at the time of sale,” Paul told Lovin Malta. “And my wife, who is Chinese and doesn’t speak English, did not fully understand the procedure of transferring the ownership of the car.”
“For this reason, we signed the transfer papers and left it in the buyer’s hands to sort out the registration.”
“After receiving the odd contravention here and there, we kept calling him to see if he had fulfilled his promise. But he kept telling us ‘tomorrow’.”
Desperate to stop the snowball of tickets from getting any bigger, Paul and Yan Yan took their case to the police.
“We had gone to the local police and they called the man. We had agreed, amicably, that he would see that the registration was completed the next day. This time, for real.”
The couple had their mind at rest that after the police’s intervention, it would be the end of the entire ordeal.
“Police are taking my wife to court. How can she get penalty points without even driving the car? She could now lose her license!”
Illegal contraventions began piling up for every sort of offence. From parking on a double yellow line to speeding and later, driving without a number plate.
“A friend of ours spotted the car in Mosta, without a number plate,” Paul said. “So we reported it once again.”
“But now, we are having to go to court for allegedly driving without a number plate… when it was us who reported it!”
Together, the total number offences have led to enough penalty points to have Yan Yan at risk of losing her license altogether.
The car, a Smart Pulse, had a number plate of Yan – 520 before it was removed altogether. To date, it is still being driven by its new owner, albeit without having registered it under his name officially.
In light of this fact, Paul and his wife are now at the mercy of police proceedings brought forward against them. And amid Paul’s poor health and Yan Yan’s difficulties representing the case on her own, the two have been plunged into a problem with no foreseeable end in sight.
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