Former PN minister Tonio Fenech has lost a libel suit he had filed against Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi over claims the latter made that he was responsible for rampant electricity theft.
In its ruling, the court said that the allegations were “criticism and comments based on facts which are substantially true.”
Dr Mizzi made the allegations in an interview on ONE radio in February 2014, in which he said that Mr Fenech had done nothing about new utility meters, despite knowing they were easy to tamper with.
Enemalta had at the time been suffering from losses and electricity theft. When it 2008, before Mr Fenech was made minister, the company had signed a deal to obtain smart electricity meters and a centralised computer monitoring system, theft had started to decline.
It however resumed again in 2011. Enemalta subsequently discovered that smart meters on three-phase systems could be tampered using a magnet, but did nothing to solve the problem.
The court observed that the corporation’s Theft Control Unit had only been set up during Dr Mizzi’s tenure. It also noted that although smart meters started being installed in 2009, the central analytics system used to identify theft cases was not installed until 2014.
In its considerations, the court said that a minister was duty-bound to shoulder responsibility when a shortcoming was identified, rather than pass the buck to third parties.
Enemalta was clearly Mr Fenech’s responsibility at the time, the court said, and not enough had been done to identify the thieves, as figures produced during the case showed.
“The applicant cannot say that the words used about him by the defendant…are libellous an defamatory as they were simply criticism of what happened in the past, criticism which is always permitted to a politician when he is talking about the actions of another politician, as long as the criticism and comments are based on facts which are substantially true and proven,” said the court.
Magistrate Francesco Depasquale dismissed the suit, ordering the plaintiff to pay the costs of the case.