Former Traffic Sergeant Jailed Five Years for Marsa Flyover Overtime

Former Malta Police Force traffic sergeant Norman Xuereb has been sentenced to five years in prison, ordered to forfeit €53,000, and perpetually barred from public office after being convicted of organising an overtime fraud scheme tied to construction of the Marsa flyovers. Magistrate Marse-Ann Farrugia identified Xuereb as the central figure in the racket. He had served as a sergeant in the traffic section since 1996 and managed extra-duty assignments within it — a position that placed him at the operational core of the scheme.

Xuereb faced four charges: fraudulently obtaining money by false pretences, fraudulent gain, issuing false declarations, and failing to prevent a crime he was obligated to stop. He pleaded not guilty on all counts. Magistrate Farrugia found three of them proved beyond reasonable doubt — the false-pretences count, the false-declarations count, and the charge that he had allowed criminal conduct he was professionally bound to prevent.

She acquitted him of the fraudulent gain charge, which had been framed as a potential alternative to the first count rather than a standalone allegation. The five-year term reflects a statutory escalation set out in Maltese law. For fraud exceeding €5,000, the sentencing range is two to nine years, with sentences of up to two years suspendable.

Magistrate Farrugia found that range rose by one degree — to between three and twelve years — because Xuereb was a public officer whose duty it was to prevent exactly this kind of crime. The five-year sentence sits near the lower end of that elevated band. A custodial term was unavoidable, she held: a clean prior record could not outweigh his role as the scheme's organiser.

The fraud exploited a legitimate arrangement within the traffic section, under which third parties, including construction contractors, can pay to have traffic police deployed at their worksites, generating overtime on top of officers' regular pay. 19 to the police for Marsa-related extra duties between February 2018 and December 2019. Officers claimed those extra-duty payments while actually working their normal, already-paid shifts.

Xuereb personally claimed €53,000 of that total — the amount the court ordered confiscated. During police questioning, Xuereb admitted receiving money he was not entitled to and acknowledged that many of his colleagues had done the same. He also told investigators that when colleagues claimed extra-duty pay but failed to appear, he sometimes had to cover those shifts himself.

Data trackers on traffic police motorcycles were not functioning correctly, hampering the investigation. Investigators turned to cell-phone data and other sources to establish that officers were not where they had claimed to be. The inquiry began in December 2019 after police received information about widespread overtime abuse and the way extra duties were being allocated in the traffic section.

It resulted in charges against 35 officers — described as practically the entire traffic section. Xuereb is the first of those defendants to be sentenced. 26, his one-thirty-fifth share of the court-appointed expert's costs.