Court asks Schembri Adami to reconsider

A court today asked Notary Sandro Schembri Adami to reconsider a guilty plea he intended to file on the understanding that three pending cases might be amalgamated into one. In a previous sitting the notary, a former Labour MP, who is facing a seven year jail term on each of three separate cases, had asked the court to treat the cases as one continuous one rather than three separate ones. This would imply that he will face a lesser jail term. In the three cases, Dr Schembri Adami was charged with failing to pay taxes on notarial contracts between 2005 and 2006 to the detriment of several people. He is currently in jail over a similar offence. He had declared that he was willing to register a guilty plea and filed a request asking that the three cases be treated as one. During today's sitting Magistrate Miriam Hayman told him the law may not allow the three cases to be pulled into one since there was a gap in the time of the commission of the crimes and the nature of the offences. Given this, she told him that he might want to reconsider his guilty plea. The case was put off to December 20 by which time Notary Schembri Adami will inform the court of his position. The court will...