A warehouse employee who stole more than 1.3 tons of meat from his workplace was sentenced to two years in jail suspended for four after the court rubbished his argument that he had not stolen the meat himself but knew who did.

Adrian Farrugia was convicted of stealing the meat in January 2010 and in the preceding three years. He took 1,350 kilograms of frozen fillet from Antonio Piscopo Ltd’s warehouse in St Paul’s Bay, where he had been working.

Mr Justice Neville Camilleri, presiding over the Court of Appeal, noted that CCTV footage showed that Farrugia was at work way after he had ended his shift and there was no justification for his presence there.

A stocktaking exercise on the missing meat revealed that almost €22,400 worth of frozen fillet had vanished from the company’s stores.

Farrugia insisted that the company had many other employees and that the missing stock could not be attributed to him alone. Moreover, there could have been an error in storage.

However, Mr Justice Camilleri rubbished these arguments. Even if the contents of an anonymous letter had to be ignored, the circumstantial evidence alone led the court to be morally convinced that Farrugia had stolen the fillet and there was no reason why it should believe his version that it had been other employees and that he knew who had stolen the meat products.

The court noted that Farrugia had moved the frozen fillet without being asked to do so and that this move “made no sense”. There was no valid reason why one should bother to move the fillets from where they were.

Moreover, Farrugia had access to the yard where there was a locked gate that leads to the warehouses. He had keys to the gate during work hours. Farrugia was responsible for the fillet stock, so, if there was anything missing, especially the volume that went missing, he should have noticed.

The judge, therefore, convicted Farrugia of the theft, sentenced him to two years in prison suspended for four and ordered him to refund the value of the stolen meat.

Lawyers Stefano Filletti and Dr Maurice Meli appeared as parte civile for the victim.  Dr Roberto Montalto was defence.