Hunters jailed for 18 months after admitting to corrupting ALE officer

Suspended constable Kenneth Sevasta will face court on Monday, while three hunters have faced criminal proceedings on Wednesday before Magistrate Edwina Grima.

Hunters Eric Scicluna 38 from Mtarfa, Glenn Neil Scicluna, 33 from Marsascala and Roderick Stabile, 27 from Zejtun were charged for conspiracy to corrupt police officer PC 699 Kenneth Sevasta. All three are relapsers.

As Glenn Neil Scicluna and Roderick Stabile admitted the charges brought against them by Superintendent Mario Spiteri, Chief Investigaor at the Police Internal Investigations Unit, they were each jailed for 18 months, however their sentence was suspended pending their appeal.

Scicluna who denied the charges is set to re-appear before a Magistrate next month.

The scandal was revealed by MaltaToday last month, after hunter  Eric Scicluna had allegedly spilt the beans that some officers were ‘on the take’, in a bid to turn a blind eye to irregularities while patrolling areas for illegal hunting.

Scicluna, who is quite known to the police, was photographed and appeared in the media last April when he was spotted while hunting illegally by passers-by in the Mtarfa area on April 12.

He was and arrested and interrogated by Inspector Paul Miruzzi of the ALE

When cautioned during interrogation, Scicluna reportedly asked to see Police Commissioner John Rizzo and revealed the racket in an apparent bid to save his face after learning that he was facing jail time for relapsing after being identified with a shotgun in the Mtarfa area on April 12.

Earlier this year, Eric Scicluna was fined €6,000 after being found guilty by a court for illegal hunting at sea, and now faces a minimum six months’ imprisonment as he will be charged for illegal poaching in Mtarfa, apart from the corruption charges.

But as he denied this in a judicial letter to this paper, senior police investigators confirmed that Scicluna gave exhaustive information about the racket, while also opening up and alleging other cases he knew about where officers were on the take by other hunters in different areas of the island.

The revelations reportedly shocked the Commissioner, who launched an immediate internal investigation.

PC Kenneth Sevasta was arrested and suspended immediately from duty, and he will appear before a Magistrate on Monday morning.

MaltaToday is informed that Scicluna has been questioned at least twice in relation to alleged bribery and had also been warned that he too may be charged for corrupting police officers.

Further investigations were launched by Police Commissioner John Rizzo after this paper also revealed how the same hunter evaded internal security checks and was granted a police license to work as a private guard with a known security firm.

MaltaToday questioned the police and the ministry of home affairs over the anomaly of the issuance of such a license that permitted Eric Scicluna to be employed by a security firm that placed him as a guard at Mater Dei Hospital.

Scicluna – who has since been placed on forced leave pending a full investigation has had a string of convictions by the Magistrates Court that include attempted bribery of a public officer in 2005, and grievous bodily harm on four persons at sea in August 2009.

Despite these convictions, no red flags were raised when the Commissioner of Police issued the licence to Scicluna.

In replies to MaltaToday this week, the Police Commissioner confirmed that Eric Scicluna’s security guard license has been suspended, given that he faces criminal proceedings.

The news rocked the entire police force as a number of officers spoke to MaltaToday about what was happening inside the ALE unit and revealed how police chiefs were reportedly told months ago by their subordinates that they had a ‘rat’ within their unit who informed hunters on raids.

“We had told our superiors many times that somebody amongst us was being quite funny, as on almost each raid we carried out, we found the hunters literally waiting for us…” a police constable told MaltaToday, adding that it was “impossible for anybody not to notice what was going on.”

The policeman was speaking under anonymity as further investigations are still ongoing.

“Some of the hunters would greet us with smiles,” the policeman explained. “They enjoyed embarrassing us in front of the bird watchers, and in many cases there would be little we could do because the illegal hunters would have had enough time to hide their weapons and pretend they were in the fields for a picnic.”

This situation was corroborated by BirdLife Malta director Tolga Temuge who explained that “since BirdLife Malta started conducting systematic surveillance operations, we have been noticing specific cases on particular persons or areas where the police response (district or ALE) was either null nor inefficient.”