Eight years after they were first charged with dumping oil into the waste system, two officials of Waste Oils Company Ltd have finally been cleared.

They were found not guilty of the charges in 2011, but the Attorney General had appealed the verdict.

Carmelo Falzon, 71, of Birkirkara as director and Oliver Debono, 54, of Sta Venera as plant manager, had been charged with having dumped contaminated waste from their Marsa plant into the public sewers.

The authorities had been alerted about the alleged wrongdoing after residents complained of bad odours in 2009. An inspection led to the discovery of two manholes containing a considerable quantity of oil which should never have been dumped into the drainage system. Two years later, criminal proceedings were instituted against the two officials.

In July 2011, the magistrate's court had cleared both men of the charges, noting that in the two-year period between the last inspection and the men's arraignment the prosecution ought to have conducted "a more detailed and accurate investigation" to determine who was actually responsible for the dumping of the waste oil into the public sewers.

But the Attorney General filed an appeal claiming that the judgment was 'null and void' since the first court had failed to follow proper legal procedure.

He claimed that upon conclusion of the evidence and submissions stage, the magistrate had "without pausing to reflect," immediately declared the accused not guilty and acquitted them "without any explanation and without reading out the sentence”.

The court of appeal, presided by Madame Justice Edwina Grima, observed that the magistrate had indeed written the judgment after pronouncing the acquittal in open court. However, it was not obligatory under criminal procedural law for a judgment to include the reasoning behind the court's decision. This point had even been established through case-law, the court declared.

After delving afresh into the evidence as requested by the Attorney General, the court of appeal also confirmed that the prosecution had failed to prove that the co-accused had been responsible for the illegal dumping of waste.

The court rejected the appeal and confirmed the first judgment.

Lawyers Michael and Lucio Sciriha were defence counsel.