Directors' acquittal on oil dumping confirmed on appeal

The acquittal of two oil company officials from charges of having pumped liquid waste into the public sewerage system has been confirmed by the Court of Appeal after a claimed procedural defect in the first judgment was found not to exist.

Waste Oils Ltd Director Carmelo Falzon, 71 and plant manager Oliver Debono, 54, had been arraigned in 2009 on charges of having dumped liquid contaminated waste, generated by their plant in Marsa, into the public drainage system without notifying the authorities and without first obtaining the necessary permit.

The authorities were made aware of the situation after residents in the area complained of foul odours emanating from drains. An inspection at the plant revealed that a considerable quantity of oil had been dumped into the drainage system. Two years later, the two officials were arrested and charged with a number of criminal offences related to the environment.

In July 2011 the magistrate's court had heard both the accused men testify, together with submissions from both prosecution and defence and had immediately proceeded to hand down judgment, declaring both men not guilty of the charges.

The Attorney General had filed an appeal, arguing that the judgment was null because the court of magistrates had not followed legal procedure. As soon as the evidence and submissions stage had concluded, argued the State prosecutor, the magistrate had immediately acquitted the men "without pausing to reflect...without any explanation and without reading out the sentence."

The prosecution had asked the court of appeal to hear all evidence afresh, but had limited the grounds of appeal to the claimed procedural defect .

In a decision handed down yesterday, Madame Justice Edwina Grima noted the records of the case showed that the magistrate had, in fact, written the judgment after pronouncing the men not guilty in open court.

However, the Court of Appeal also noted that the law of criminal procedure did not require, on pain of nullity, that a judgment include the reasoning behind the court's decision, adding that this principle had been established through jurisprudence.

The Court of Appeal's re-examination of the evidence confirmed that the prosecution had failed to prove the allegation that the men had been behind the illegal dumping.

It observed that the Court of Magistrates had also remarked that “in the two-year period between the last inspection and the arraignment of the accused, the prosecution could have conducted a more detailed and accurate investigation to establish precisely who was responsible for the dumping of such an amount of waste oil into the public sewers.”

The court held that as the grounds of the appeal had been limited to the AG's assertion that delivery of the original judgment had suffered from a procedural defect and since this procedural defect did not subsist, the appeal was rejected and the first judgment confirmed.

Lawyers Michael and Lucio Sciriha were defence counsel.