The man whose 18-year jail term lay at the heart of the bribery scandal surrounding the late judge Ray Pace has been handed a five-year reduction on appeal against his prison term.
Darren Charles Desira, 41, of Żebbuġ, had landed the jail term back in November 2012, together with a €46,800 fine payable within two months after admitting before the Criminal Court to having played a minor role in the conspiracy intended to smuggle drugs into Malta from the Netherlands 10 years earlier.
Indeed, Mr Desira, then an inexperienced 26-year old, had been targeted by the mastermind behind the conspiracy, Ġużeppi Sacco, who subsequently passed away pending criminal proceedings in his regard.
The latter had engaged the young Desira to enter into an agreement with a third man, John Sultana, a trailer driver, for the specific purpose of ferrying drugs from the Netherlands.
Equipped with the necessary cash supplied by Mr Sacco, Mr Desira had embarked upon a trip to the Netherlands where he was to effect payment for a drug consignment from a yet unknown supplier.
It turned out that Mr Desira never encountered the supplier, later identified as Hasan Ben Salah.
The drug, consisting of just under two kilos of highly pure cocaine, was handed over to Mr Sultana, the trailer driver, and was shipped to Malta through the involvement of a fourth man, Joseph Borg, after being hidden inside the drivers’ toilets on board the MV Żebbuġ.
During the proceedings in court against the drug conspirators, it emerged that Mr Desira had never handled the drug and had received a mere Lm2,000 for his role as middleman in the conspiracy.
The other co-conspirators, John Sultana and Joseph Borg, had likewise admitted to their involvement and had been condemned, back in 2005, to 14 years imprisonment and a €51,246 fine and 13 years imprisonment and a €46,587 fine respectively.
The supplier, Mr Salah, had been extradited to Malta under a European Arrest Warrant and had undergone trial in 2009, landing a 20-year jail term and a €50,000 fine over his involvement in this and other drug consignments.
An appeal was filed against Mr Desira’s sentence wherein it was argued that the punishment had been excessive, particularly when bearing in mind certain factors such as his early guilty plea and his clean criminal record at the time of commission of the crime.
Moreover, as the youngest player in the criminal racket, Mr Desira had purposely been sought out by other crafty individuals and had been deceived into undertaking the trip to Holland all alone, the appellant’s lawyers had argued.