For Jeremy Cassar Torregiani, the great-grandson of one of the founders of the National Bank of Malta (NBM), the recent Constitutional Court ruling awarding €71.8 million in compensation is a landmark that confirms what his family has known for five decades. But it is not the end of the story.

“I think the moral victory has been established by the Court under appeal,” Mr Cassar Torregiani says unequivocally. “So today, everyone knows that the Bank of Valletta was stolen from its rightful shareholders by our politicians.”

This statement follows the Court’s ruling that brought to a close more than three decades of litigation over the government’s 1973 takeover of the NBM. The Court found that while the state’s intervention during a liquidity crisis was justified by the need to protect depositors, forcing shareholders to relinquish their shares without any compensation was a “disproportionate burden” and a breach of their constitutional rights.

Mr Cassar Torregiani reveals that throughout this long period, no government ever engaged the shareholders in a meaningful discussion about compensation.

“No Government ever bothered to sit down with shareholders to determine the value of the bank,” he has previously said, highlighting the core grievance that fuelled the half-century legal battle.

The nationalisation in 1973 followed a run on the bank's reserves, which was exacerbated by massive withdrawals from government-owned entities and the Central Bank's refusal to act as a lender of last resort.

The compensation model: A “chassis” of justice?

While the Court acknowledged the constitutional breach, the compensation model it used is a primary point of contention. Mr Cassar Torregiani breaks down the calculation with a memorable analogy.

The starting point was the Government’s current 25 per cent stake in Bank of Valletta (BOV), valued at €198.5 million. The Court explicitly ignored the 75 per cent of the bank that the Government sold over the years to avoid impacting third-party shareholders who were not part of the case.

“It’s a bit like stealing a car and giving you back its chassis, telling you to rebuild it from there so that the people who bought the stolen car won’t have to give it back,” Mr Cassar Torregiani explains.

This amount was then reduced by 30 per cent to reflect the “public interest” of the 1973 intervention, and by a further 20 per cent to account for the “uncertainty” of how the NBM would have fared. Finally, the Court of Appeal reduced the total to cover only the 70 per cent of shareholders represented in this case, leaving the remaining 30 per cent to file a separate "tag-along" case.

The result is a €71.8 million award, a fraction of the shareholders' principal claim for the present-day value of BOV, which exceeds €1.4 billion.

Has justice been served? The fight continues

When asked if he feels justice has been served, Mr Cassar Torregiani’s answer is clear and points to the future.

“We have four months to put together an application to the European Court of Human Rights,” he says. “There seems to be a strong appetite amongst the shareholders for this to be pursued, but it’s also too soon to know if it will be taken on.”

So while the domestic legal journey has concluded, the quest for what the shareholders believe is full and fair compensation may yet enter a new, international chapter. For the heirs of the NBM’s original founders, the ruling is a vindication of their long-held position, but the financial and moral reckoning they seek is not fully settled.

The Constitutional Court’s ruling closes one of Malta’s longest-running legal sagas - at least locally.

The central question of whether the takeover was a “necessary evil” to save the financial system remains unanswered. We will never truly know if the National Bank of Malta could have weathered the storm and survived on its own, if it wasn't abruptly nationalised. This uncertainty is the enduring shadow over a case that, after fifty years, has found legal closure but not historical resolution.