Three-year jail term and hefty fine revoked on appeal

Two men who had been jailed and fined for their involvement in a cigarette smuggling racket had their conviction overturned on appeal.

Michael Borg, 43, from Paola, and Shannon Cauchi, 29, from Ħamrun, had been charged in 2013 alongside three others with conspiring to smuggle thousands of contraband cigarettes into Malta, thereby evading thousands of euros owed to the public coffers.

Last June, they had been given a three-year jail term and fined €488,000 each.

Two of the alleged conspirators had been acquitted by a Magistrates’ Court which found insufficient evidence linking them to the illegal shipment. The other three had been convicted and all filed an appeal.

When delivering judgment in respect of Mr Borg and Mr Cauchi, the court of criminal appeal, presided over by Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera, observed that such a case would have called for a magisterial inquiry to ensure that experts would be tasked to preserve the evidence.

In this case, no inquiry had been called and no expert had been nominated to actually determine the contents of the illegal shipment, the Court pointed out, adding that the prosecution, although exhibiting the master cases in court, had only...