An engineer who admitted to the theft of scrap gold from his employer ST Microelectronics (Malta)has been ordered to refund the company over €34,000.

Daniel Mercieca had been employed as an engineer and manager on ST's production lines known as PBGA Lines and TQFP Optical lines.

The company claimed that in the course of 2002, 2003 and 2004 Mr Mercieca had stolen 10.58kg of scrap gold which was a by-product of these production lines. The gold had a value of €120,164.

Furthermore, Mr Mercieca had admitted to the theft of scrap gold, but had not admitted to the theft of such a large quantity.

The company asked the court to order Mr Mercieca to pay it €120,164 by way of damages.

Mr Mercieca admitted to the theft of 1.5 kilos of scrap gold, but denied having stolen more than this amount.

The court heard that the company had based its claim on the computations made by KPMG AG of Zurich which had been engaged to establish the quantity of scrap gold that had been stolen.

In the course of the criminal proceedings, Mr Mercieca told the police that he had misappropriated approximately 150 grammes of scrap gold per month, which meant that a total of 3 kilos had been taken by him in the period from September 2002 to September 2004.

It further resulted that there was no record of the amount of gold scrap that Mr Mercieca was given by the material servers. Neither was there a record of the amount of scrap gold that was returned to the stores by him.

The court found that Mr Mercieca's version of how much scrap gold had been taken was to be upheld.

The court found that he had misappropriated three kilos of scrap gold over a period of 78 weeks. That amount of gold, in 2004, was worth €34,161.88.

Mr Mercieca was ordered to pay €34,161.88 and 60 per cent of the litigation expenses, while the company was ordered to pay the remaining 40 per cent on the basis that it had filed its claim for a far larger sum that was liquidated by the court.