An Italian man caught selling cannabis in Swieqi in his Ferrari will receive €70,000 in compensation after a court found that the supercar was sold despite pending judicial proceedings to have it returned.

The court also ruled that the man, Davide Sapienza, suffered several breaches of his human rights.

The black Ferrari 360 had been auctioned off by the Maltese Asset Recovery Bureau, which earned a good telling off from Mr Justice Joseph Zammit McKeon for selling the car despite knowing about the constitutional case filed by Italian national.

Mr Sapienza had been caught selling cannabis in December 2013. The police had searched his apartment where they found three kilogrammes of cannabis and had seized his Ferrari, found parked in the Portomaso parking area, a Citroen Saxo, around €7,000 in cash which had been found hidden under his mattress, six mobile phones and a laptop.

Mr Sapienza had been charged with cannabis trafficking and aggravated possession of cannabis and cocaine. During the compilation of evidence against him, Mr Sapienza had requested permission to go to Italy and never came back as he filed a request in Italy to be judged there for the crimes committed in Malta. The Italian court sentenced him to three years in jail and fined him €14,000.

Malta had filed a European Arrest Warrant but the Italian courts refused to accede to the request as he had already been sentenced for the crime for which he was wanted in Malta.

In September 2018, Mr Sapienza filed proceedings in Malta to have the criminal case withdrawn and a month later filed an application to be able to get back the seized items. But the attorney general objected and insisted that the items should be confiscated.

The Magistrates’ Court upheld this argument in November 2018 and the items, including the Ferrari, became government property. In January, Mr Sapienza filed the constitutional case claiming a number of breaches of his fundamental human rights, which Mr Justice Zammit McKeon upheld.

“Although the Asset Recovery Bureau did not have an injunction to stop it from selling the Ferrari, the ARB could have used its good judgment not to sell it once they knew of these pending constitutional proceedings and should have kept it for longer in its compound.

“Although the Attorney General was not aware of the sale, he is here representing the State and if State entities breach people’s fundamental rights, it is the AG who has to shoulder responsibility for this,” Mr Justice Zammit McKeon said as he ordered Malta to pay Mr Sapienza €5,000 as moral damages in addition to €65,000 to cover the sold Ferrari which had been sold for €36,605 following a three-way bidding war.

Malta’s court experts valued the car at between €55,000 and €80,000 if sold abroad. One car surveyor told the court that the value if sold locally would be around €20,000 since the buyer would then have to pay a hefty registration tax of around €125,000.

Mr Justice Zammit McKeon ruled that there had been at least four breaches of Mr Sapienza’s fundamental rights, including his right not to be punished twice for the same offence. The confiscation of the items was punishing him for the offence for which he was tried and punished in Italy.

There was also another breach because the request for the confiscation of the seized items was not backed by a law at the time. The law was eventually introduced later. Moreover, he was denied the right to the enjoyment of his property.

The court ruled that Mr Sapienza also had his right to a fair trial breached. The law states that property shall be liable to forfeiture if it is established that the value of the property is disproportionate to his lawful income and likely to have been obtained from criminal activities.

However, he was not given the chance to explain that the items were not purchased from the proceeds of drug trafficking.