Appeals court partially overturns convictions in fake 'Malta honey' case

Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri has exonerated a woman from selling fake Maltese honey, while reducing her son’s suspended sentence by two months.

Presiding over the Court of Criminal Appeal, Camilleri ruled that no connection had been proved between the honey-selling operation and Michelina Enriquez.

The case dates back to 2011, when the Department of Agriculture had received reports of honey being falsely labelled as originating from Malta. Inspectors had called on Jamie Charles Enriquez and his mother Michelina, who live in San Lawrenz. 

In the family's San Lawrenz house, the inspectors found a packaging operation, as well as buckets full of oil that was being distributed in bottles labelled “Gozo Specialities”, the name of a business run by Jamie and his brother Simon. 

The inspectors had also seized a bucket labelled as containing Maltese honey, samples from which a court-appointed expert later found as having originated from Sicily.

The Gozo Court had fined Michelina Enriquez €700 for manufacturing honey which did not conform to regulations and mislabelling Sicilian honey as “Malta Honey”. Her son, Simon, was additionally found guilty of using a false trademark, manufacturing substandard honey, and selling it under misleading packaging, and was handed a suspended sentence.

In April 2014, the mother and son appealed the Gozo court's judgment, arguing that the honey samples had not been taken using the correct legal or accounting procedure and that none of the inspectors had advised them that they had a right to request a sample for independent testing. They therefore argued that there was no guarantee that the sample seen by the court expert had not been contaminated in some way - a problem compounded by the fact that the sample had been taken from an open bucket and not from one of the sealed containers that were on sale.

In May 2015, the courts reduced a separate sentence that had been imposed on Jamie Charles Enriquez’s brother Simon Kris Enriquez, for running the operation.

In its judgment, the Court of Appeals declared that no connection had been proved between the honey-selling operation and Michelina Enriquez, exonerating her completely of all charges as a result. 

It also upheld the arguments regarding the origin, accounting and testing of the samples, holding that that the procedure used in taking these samples and their subsequent analysis was not in conformity with Food Safety Act. 

Presiding judge Silvio Camilleri also noted that while the inspections had been carried out by officials from the Department of Agriculture, no evidence had been presented to satisfy the court that the officials were adequately qualified under the Food Safety Act.

In the same manner as it had previously overturned Simon Enriquez's conviction for attaching a false commercial description to the produce, manufacturing or selling  sub-standard honey and misleading consumers as to the source of pre-packed goods, the appellate court cleared  Jamie Charles Enriquez of these charges.

It, however, confirmed the only remaining charge: that of knowingly making use of misleading labels on merchandise, and suspended the four month sentence imposed by the previous court, for a year.