A court has upheld an argument by a defence lawyer who described as "legalised usury" a prosecution request for a man accused of evading import duty to be fined over the entire amount of the consignment rather than the amount he had underpaid.
Magistrate Josette Demicoli was ruling in a case against Gordon Spiteri, 43, from Balzan, who was accused of under-declaring the value of the meat he imported in two containers in 2007.
The court heard how Mr Spiteri, a director of AMG Meats limited, ordered consignments of frozen boneless meat from New Zealand. His brother, also a director, as well as his father, did not know that he under-declared the value of the meat to pay less import duty.
Police investigations revealed that the documents given to the Customs Department in Malta and those processed by the Customs office in New Zealand did not tally. It was revealed that out of three consignments, one container load was fully declared while on the remaining two containers, there was an under declaration of the value of the meat being imported.
The court heard how the defence did not contest the under declaration but were hotly contesting the calculation of the actual amount of duty owed. Lawyer Joe Giglio said that the prosecution was expecting his client to pay the full amount, without subtracting the amount of duty that had already been paid on the declared amount of meat. This, he said, constituted "legalised usury".
The court heard how Mr Spiteri had paid €47,671 in duty on the first container when he should have paid €50,999 - a discrepancy of €3,329. He had declared the value of the meat as being €80,006 when the actual value was €106,006.
On the second container, the court noted how Mr Spiteri had declared the value of the meat as €85,257 when the actual value of the meat was €134,313. Mr Spiteri had paid €50,857 when he should have paid €57,135 - a discrepancy of €6,278.
According to law, the fine that must be imposed on someone being found guilty of evasion of duty is three times the amount actually evaded.
Before Magistrate Demicoli, Dr Giglio argued that while the total of evaded import duty was €9,607, the prosecution was requesting the court to fine Mr Spiteri over the total import duty for the two containers - €50,999 and €57,135. Based on this calculation, the prosecution was expecting a fine equivalent to three times the total amount of duty of €108,134 - €324,402.
However, Dr Giglio rebutted that the court could not ignore the €98,528 that had already been paid in import duty over the same containers.
Magistrate Demicoli upheld this argument and fined him €28,821, equivalent to three times the evaded import duty of €9,607, which is the amount actually owed by Mr Spiteri to the Customs Department. She also cleared him of charges related to forgery of documents but only found him guilty of under declaring the real value of the meat imported.
Police Inspector Maurice Curmi prosecuted.