Charlot Zahra
MaltaToday Managing Editor Saviour Balzan was fined €7000 after the Criminal Appeals Court overturned an earlier judgement by the Magistrates Court that had acquitted Balzan of allegedly violating the Gaming Act almost three years ago.
The police had brought criminal proceedings against Balzan over a piece penned by the late Julian Manduca on the Dragonara Casino and Brasserie, which was published in MaltaToday on 19 January 2005.
In the original sentence of 6 April 2006, Magistrate Silvio Meli had ruled that the prosecution’s case had rested on the definition of the term “advert”, as indicated in the charges presented by the Police Commissioner.
The court had ruled that the Gaming Act did not include a definition of the term “advert”, proceeding to state that the law itself “falls through since the rule of law required in a serious judicial system requires clear parameters so that everybody is aware of his actions.”
The Court ruled that in view of this absence, it would then rest on the layman’s definition of what constituted an advert: a restricted space, a focused meaning with careful and direct language, a prescribed space and is generally against payment.
In this case, the Court ruled that this did not result in the MaltaToday article and that “the language used and the space given is one of an informative article – which is effectively the main aim of every article in a newspaper”.
It was also proven to the Court that MaltaToday had received no payment for the publication of the article.
In view of this, the Magistrates’ Court found Saviour Balzan not guilty of violating the Gaming Act and acquitted him.
Attorney General appeals
Despite the acquittal, the Attorney General Silvio Camilleri lodged an appeal against the judgment, claiming the Magistrates’ Court failed to appreciate the evidence and interpreted the law incorrectly, especially with regards to what constituted an advert.
“The reading of this article clearly indicates that this was intended to advertise and inform the public about the gaming facilities at Dragonara Casino,” the Attorney-General claimed.
He added that in the lack of a definition of an advert in the Gaming Act, the Court had to use its common sense and see the aim behind the article.
In its judgement, the Criminal Appeals Court, presided over by Judge Giannino Caruana Demajo, overturned the ruling of the Magistrates’ Court that there was no definition of the term “advert” in the Gaming Act.
In a legalistic argument, it said that for a newspaper editor to be found guilty of making an illegal advert in terms of the Gaming Act, the words published in the newspaper of which he was responsible are words that “informs the public that in a building in Malta is a building where casino gaming is taking place or will be taking place”.
“The Court has to look at the information given, not at the format or whether a payment or not was made to establish whether an advert was committed,” the Criminal Appeals Court contended.
In the view of the Court, the article “says that in the building of the Dragonara’ Casino there is a ‘gaming facility’, states the types of games that can be played and on how many tables, states what you have to do to enter and states how you can arrive to the place”.
“Whoever reads the article cannot not understand that the Dragonara Casino’ is ‘a building where casino gaming is taking place or will be taking place’, the Criminal Appeal Court claimed.
The Court also ruled that there was also not doubt that the information was being given “to the public” as it was being published in a newspaper that is sold freely to the public.
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