Anika De Vilera’s fraud crimes reported to police by several Maltese companies

Fraud crimes which were committed in Malta by Croatian national Anika De Vilera were reported to the police by several Maltese companies who fell victim to the crimes, The Malta Independent has learnt.

Sources close to Ms De Vilera said that many companies in Malta to which Ms De Vilera owes money have reported these cases of fraud to the police. This newsroom has also seen one of the police reports, which was filed in 2015. Ms De Vilera allegedly owes tens of thousands of euros in total, distributed over a variety of services, from catering services, to shipping, childcare and house rental services.

One known instance of fraud by Ms De Vilera which was taken to the Maltese Courts was in 2016, when Ms De Vilera was ordered to pay more than €80,000 by the Maltese courts for a loan to a third party, which she had borrowed from an acquaintance.

Last Sunday, The Malta Independent on Sunday reported that Ms De Vilera had succeeded in leaving the country with her one-year-old daughter, Aurelia, despite alleged criminal investigations and a border lock injunction put in place by Andreas Gerdes, Aurelia’s biological father, to prevent the child from being taken out of Malta.

Mr Gerdes had informed this newspaper that Ms De Vilera confessed to these crimes in December 2016. “Despite a Maltese border lock being in place, a convicted foreign criminal abducted a vulnerable one-year-old girl and disappeared out of the country while under police investigation,” said Mr Gerdes, in a plea to bring Aurelia back to Malta safely.

Anika De Vilera has been frequently mentioned in relation to criminal activity in both Maltese and international news. She was recently exposed by the local media for keeping a Serbian woman ‘enslaved’ and maltreated in her Sliema home. Her name was also mentioned in the Croatian press last year, reporting Ms De Vilera’s involvement in a situ- ation where funds from a children’s charity disappeared. In September 2010, Ms De Vilera was also convicted on three counts of fraud by the Berlin Administrative Court. This newsroom has also sent a number of questions to the local police in relation to Ms De Vilera’s fraud, and why she was left to leave the country even though there was a provisional border lock.

The alleged infamy of Ms De Vilera is collected on a website www.anikadevilera.com, which presents documents related to the woman, to warn others. The website’s opening page states that it was set up “to limit her causing more damage anytime, anywhere.”