Two men who were separately accused of electricity theft and bribery of public officials, were acquitted by a Magistrates’ Court, which urged the prosecution to “exercise great caution and discernment” in evaluating evidence before filing charges.  

Lewis Caruana had been accused of having stolen some €4,000 worth of electricity at his Zurrieq farm in 2014 by bridging his meter. The man denied the accusation claiming that he had personally reported the faulty meter after this was struck by lightning. He also denied having bribed Enemalta officials or employees.

A Divisional Manager at the Enemalta Distribution Unit testified how reports of three under-registering meters had sparked off an investigation by the company. The faulty meters had been checked by ENEL employees who at the time happened to be in Malta working on the introduction of smart meters.

Upon inspection and further testing in specialized labs in Italy, it was reported that the faulty devices had indeed been tampered with and hacked. In the case of the accused, however, a court-appointed expert had testified that the meter had indeed been damaged by a lightning strike.

In court, the prosecution presented two evidence bags, one signed by the accused upon inspection and another presenting a signature which the accused denied as his own. 

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech, observed that the prosecution had failed to engage a handwriting expert to verify the contested signature. Nor had it attempted to summon Enemalta representatives to shed light on a discrepancy in the amount and numbering sequence of the evidence bags.

“Besides, the Court finds it hard to understand what could have made the police charge the accused with complicity in corruption of public officials or employees, which charges were confirmed in the note of referral, when these officials or employees - essential elements of this offence - do not emerge from any of the evidence.”

“This was a case marked by a total absence of evidence about the intervention of a public official or employee, an essential prerequisite for charges of corruption,” the court observed.

In a similar case of alleged meter tampering dating back to 2011, criminal action had been instituted against Brian Jones over electricity theft.

The same court noted that an Enemalta witness had failed to confirm that the meter in question belonged to the accused, but had remembered that it was located in the lift room at garage level. This was a common area of the block of flats, where all the metres are affixed. The door to this common area had a lock, the keys to which were held by all of the block’s residents.

Despite its misgivings about the accused's claim to have never bothered checking the meter for 10 years since moving in, the court observed that the prosecution’s case was “riddled with ...difficulties which militated against the finding of guilt on the part of the accused:”

No expert had been appointed to determine whether the meter had indeed been tampered with and whether the tampering had led to electricity theft. Ruling that the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, the court likewise acquitted Mr Jones of all charges.