Watch: Jason Azzopardi Warns Of Major LESA Racket To Forgive Fines And Penalty Points
Jason Azzopardi has called for a magisterial inquiry into an alleged racket at LESA that saw several fines and penalty points for traffic violations forgiven.
Azzopardi said that the racket has been going on for at least three years and that Neville Camilleri, a PL Paola councillor and LESA customer care official, had approached people in the village square last May to ask if they want their traffic fines forgiven.
He said the racket worked as follows.
“A Maltese man, Joe Borg, would be caught driving through a one-way street or over-speeding, received a ticket and lost points. For some people, whose jobs depend on their driving license, a loss of four penalty points could mean the revocation of their driving license.”
“In agreement with LESA CEO Svetlick Flores and Neville Camilleri, the LESA servers were abused through a backdoor and these fines and points were transferred to a tourist called John Smith who would have rented a car.”
“At any point in time, LESA would know who is renting which rental cars because car rental companies need to send them a copy of the rental agreement.”
“When John Smith returns the car, often at the airport, the last thing on his mind would be to check his traffic contraventions. However, everyone who signs a car rental agreement must provide a deposit as a guarantee, so the car rental company simply takes the fines from this pre-authorised amount on their credit card.”
“This money remains in the hands of the car rental company and isn’t transferred to LESA. The penalty points are transferred to John Smith, but he wouldn’t be any the wiser and they won’t impact his driving license back home.”
Azzopardi said the racket was deployed “ingenuously” with the “precision of a Swiss clock”.
“LESA officials were complicit in losing out on substantial funds that they should have received and the car rental companies did extremely well. Some of them earned tens of thousands of euro a year through this racket, it was like manna falling from the sky.”
He warned the racket was abetted by LESA CEO Svetlick Flores and said Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri was aware of it.
He advised tourists who received a traffic violation for a day during a week or month in which they were definitely not in Malta to contact him to submit it as evidence to the magistrate.
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