AG ‘ignored’ action against six Wasteserv officials
The Attorney General’s Office has spent a year sitting on a magistrate’s advice to prosecute six people in connection with the incinerator death of Joseph Ellul, Jason Azzopardi claimed yesterday.
Azzopardi said that the magistrate had concluded an inquiry into the March 2022 death in April 2023. The inquiry recommended that prosecutors file criminal charges against six individuals, Azzopardi said on RTK 103.
The lawyer and former PN MP followed up his radio interview with a post on Facebook which included extracts of those inquiry conclusions. He had already teased an extract of that document late last year.
In those extracts, the court document recommends criminal charges against Wasteserv CEO Richard Bilocca, company workers Ryan Mark Cachia, Ryan Cauchi and Aylin Fleri, and health and safety officials Stefan Salamone and Silvan Borg.
When Azzopardi first made the allegations in November, WasteServ said it was not aware of the inquiry conclusions and insisted its staff had done nothing wrong.
The inquiry led by Magistrate Elaine Rizzo began on March 10, 2022 when Ellul, 38, was found dead with cuts to his throat close to a lift of an incinerator used to process abattoir waste in Marsa.
Ellul’s family has since started legal action against Wasteserv in connection with the tragic death.
Speaking yesteday, Azzopardi said the magisterial inquiry clearly laid out the health and safety failings identified by court experts.
The extracts he published on social media suggested that Ellul died when he stuck his head in a hatch to check a piece of equipment that was not functioning properly.
Among other things, the hatch had no guards, mesh or protective features in place.
The report notes that Bilocca testified that the machinery was not “childproof ” and attributed the death to an “act of stupidity”.
Azzopardi said that despite the magistrate’s recommendation for criminal proceedings against the six named individuals, nothing had happened. He drew parallels with the case of Jean Paul Sofia, who was also killed at a workplace due to regulatory and health and safety failings.
When prompted by radio show host Andrew Azzopardi, Jason Azzopardi also said the inquiry also recommended that a number of witnesses be prosecuted for perjury as it believed they had lied under oath, to cover up what actually happened.
“The hatch had no guards, mesh or protective features