A man’s 15-year wait for an insurance company to settle his claim over the theft of his luxury speedboat has come to an end, with a court finding that the firm failed to prove its suspicions of insurance fraud.

Mr Justice Lawrence Mintoff ordered Gasan Mamo Insurance Agency Ltd to pay Anthony Baldacchino €23,300 over a claim he filed when his Sunseeker boat went missing from the Msida yacht marina in November 2000.

The insurance company had refused to honour the claim because it believed this was a case of insurance fraud.

It said Mr Baldacchino had failed to prove his claim, information was missing and it did not believe his case was genuine.

The insurance company then told the man it would wait for the police report before proceeding. Two days later, the man was arrested and questioned by the police about the boat’s disappearance.

Mr Baldacchino had bought the boat from a Joseph Conti. The boat immediately developed engine trouble during the test drive and yet more engine trouble a year later. A week before it went missing, the boat was undergoing maintenance.

The general manager of Gasan Mamo Insurance, Leslie Causon, told the court that Rein Caruana, the executive manager at the insurance broker, had told him he received an anonymous call from a man claiming he was instructed to steal or set fire to the boat.

However, Mr Caruana denied this. The insurance company also said that Mr Baldacchino’s brother, Paul, had informed it that the boat had not really been stolen and was being kept in a garage in Qormi.

Police investigated but found no evidence of fraud

The police investigated Mr Baldacchino but found no evidence of insurance fraud.

The company had also hired a private investigator to look into the matter.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Mintoff said that if the company was claiming insurance fraud, it had to prove it.

Moreover, it did not find Paul Baldacchino to be a credible witness, especially since the two brothers were not on speaking terms.

The court observed that he was acting out of anger and revenge after his brother had reported his son for alleged theft some years before.

The insurance claim should not have been dismissed solely on the information given by an unreliable witness, especially when the police had found no wrongdoing, the court said.

It ordered the company to honour the claim and to pay Mr Baldacchino €23,300.