Temporary warrant sends Customs back to brass tacks

The courts have provisionally upheld a request filed by a scrap metal dealer, preventing the Director General of Customs from proceeding with an auction of 88 tonnes of scrap metal for which it had issued a tender.

The plaintiffs, operators in the metal waste management sector, claim that they had been prevented from freely viewing the items that were listed as for sale by a tender published by the customs department.

The warrant of prohibitory injunction, signed by lawyers John Bonello and Franco Debono, is to temporarily prevent the sale of seven lots of red brass scrap, weighing some 88,000kg in total, worth over €400,000.

According to the company’s version of events, when a representative of DDE Attard Ltd went to the Customs Stores in Marsa to inspect the objects for sale, he was prevented from doing so and instead, was handed a small sample. After testing, the sample was found to be the much less valuable yellow brass, as opposed to the advertised red brass.

The plaintiff claims that this fact, together with the fact that sale is on a tale quale  basis has prejudiced the rights of D.D.E. Attard Ltd and therefore requested the court issue the warrant in order to prevent the sale.