A magistrate has cleared a wedding reception hall owner of electricity theft after noting it was impossible he had tampered with the meter since only one of the four seals had been broken.

Pierre Peter Abela, 55, from Attard, was cleared after the court ruled that the evidence presented by the prosecution was not enough to secure a conviction.

Mr Abela had been charged in 2009 with stealing some €7,500 worth of electricity at the wedding hall between October 2000 and October 2005. According to Enemalta, which carried out a surprise inspection in 2005, the three-phase meter was under-registering 33 per cent of the actual consumption.

Mr Abela denied tampering with the meter and listed several instances where he had contacted Enemalta because of faults in the electrical supply as well as damages he had suffered as a result.

He told the court that in 2000 he had contacted Enemalta over fluctuations and surges to the power supply. The correspondence spanned over a number of years because the problems resurfaced every few months, despite Enemalta telling him there was nothing wrong with the meter that had been installed in August 1998.

On one occasion, he said, he had written to the corporation holding it responsible for damages sustained to the air conditioning system. He had also told the utilities company that the fluctuations could have damaged the meter.

When an inspection was carried out in 2003, Enemalta technicians found that one of four seals on the meter was broken and a part, referred to as the shunt, had been moved.

On that occasion, Mr Abela said, he had been told that the meter was under-registering and had been asked to pay Enemalta €2,330. He thought the story had ended there but criminal action was still taken against him and he was charged in 2009.

The court heard how the shunt could not have been tampered with unless all four seals had been broken. It also heard how the three-phase meter was replaced, and the new meter was registering an average daily consumption less than when the ‘tampered’ meter was still in place.

Magistrate Scerri Herrera said these two facts disproved the allegation that the meter had been tampered with, especially considering that the remaining three seals had been broken by Enemalta officials during the inspection. Mr Abela was cleared of the charges.

Police inspector Carlos Cordina prosecuted.