A man convicted of electricity theft has been cleared on appeal.
The man, Louis Attard, had landed a 14-month jail term suspended for 28 months after he was found in possession of a defective meter.
A Magistrates' Court had found him guilty of stealing electricity, to the detriment of Enemalta, which had suffered some €1,700 in damages and costs.
But a court on Tuesday pronounced the earlier judgment as “not safe and satisfactory”.
It all began when officials from the electricity provider called at the accused’s Mosta residence in February 2014 to inspect the meter which was deemed to be defective.
The actual consumption registered did not reflect the load, prompting the officials to remove the meter for further investigations.
Criminal action was instituted against several persons, including Mr Attard, upon a complaint by Enemalta.
Two court-appointed experts confirmed that the meter had been tampered with, since seals were missing and conductive paste was causing the wrong readings.
However, these experts could not determine when the tampering had taken place, whether before or after the installation of the meter, nor whether the seals had been intact when the meter was taken away by Enemalta officials.
No description of the meter at the time of its removal was given in court.
Moreover, Paul Pantalleresco, also prosecuted for meter tampering, had testified that he had never spoken to Mr Attard about the matter. Although the two had been work colleagues for 28 years, they had only spoken about other matters on some five occasions.
The accused himself had likewise denied having ever spoken to Mr Pantalleresco about the tampering business and denied any knowledge of the faulty meter at his home.
The court of criminal appeal, presided over by Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera, observed that when the alleged tampering had come to light, the duty magistrate had not been informed and, therefore, there had been no magisterial inquiry to preserve the evidence.
Nor were court experts present when the meter was removed.
Moreover, Mr Pantalleresco had admitted to the tampering, stating that the accused had nothing to do with it and that he had not even been present when the meter had been installed in the presence of his wife.
Upon the basis of all evidence put forward, the court concluded that the criminal intent had not been proven, declared the first judgment “not safe and satisfactory” and overturned the conviction since it was not convinced that the accused had tampered with the meter.
Lawyers Edward Gatt and Ishmael Psaila were defence counsel.