A funeral director employed as a supervisor at the Addolorata cemetery was acquitted of purposely altering burial records thereby giving a family the green light to bury their father in the same grave where less than a year before they had buried their mother.
Salvatore Laferla, 64, was accused of having made unlawful gains by fraudulently altering the database at the cemetery, without due authorisation, for the purpose of issuing a false declaration. He was also charged with computer misuse.
In a case which later appeared to have been sparked off by strong antagonism towards the accused by competitors in the funerary business, the court was told how Mr Laferla had been approached by family members of a man who had passed away barely a year after the death of his wife.
The accused, a supervisor at the Addolorata Cemetery, had allegedly inputted misleading data into the burial records thereby permitting the burial to take place inside the same grave, in breach of a sanitary policy prohibiting a second burial before the lapse of one year.
In the course of proceedings, the accused strongly insisted that he had never effected the alleged changes, attributing the error to the defective data system at the cemetery. Moreover, it was pointed out that he was a fully authorised funeral director, conducting his business together with his partner and under the approval of his superiors.
On the basis of all the evidence, the court, presided over by Magistrate Joseph Mifsud, observed that it had been shown that the cemetery had a faulty database, riddled with ‘repeated mistakes’ which were not just ‘small and trivial errors’.
Moreover, it had been proved that the accused had been approached by relatives of the deceased who could have availed themselves of two other family graves for the second burial. This fact, which was given particular weight by the court, meant that the accused would have been paid his dues whichever grave was used without needing to resort to the alleged fraudulent activity.
The court observed that the action against the accused appeared to have been sparked off by a strong antagonism from rival funeral directors. In fact it had been the complaint of one such operator, who had handled the wife’s funeral and expected to take control of that of the husband, which led to the proceedings.
Even a representative of the Malta Hearse Association had testified about numerous complaints concerning the accused who, owing to his position as supervisor at the Addolorata Cemetery, was deemed to enjoy an advantage over rival funeral directors.
Since the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, the court was left with ‘a lurking doubt’ and pronounced an acquittal since it could not convict the man ‘simply on the basis of a suspicion’.