A Maltese man has been jailed for four years and fined E18,000 by an Italian court after he was found guilty of trafficking cocaine in August last year.

Richard Alistair Cranston, an Englishman with Maltese citizenship, was apprehended with three kilogrammes of cocaine after he disembarked from the Malta-Sicily catamaran.

The Italian court heard how the 40-year-old man was apprehended by the Italian Guardia di Finanza after he disembarked from the MV Maria Dolores following several days of investigations and surveillance.

He was arrested while he was driving a car in Catania.

The cocaine was found hidden in a rented car parked at the city’s Fontanarossa airport.

According to the Italian media reporting on the arrest, the cocaine was quite pure and has a street market value of E2 million.

In her judgement, Judge Dorotea Catena also generally interdicted him from holding any public office for a period of five years. The accused decided to follow shorter proceedings than usual so as to benefit from a lesser punishment.

The actual punishment could have been of six years in jail and a E27,000 fine.

Dr Jose Herrera and Dr Edward Zammit Lewis appeared for the man before the Italian courts.

When he was apprehended by the Italian authorities, the Maltese police had said that Cranston had not left Malta with the drugs and that the cocaine had not been transported from Malta to Sicily on board the MV Maria Dolores.

The Maltese police had been informed about the case by the Italian authorities but no investigations are being carried out since the drugs did not leave from Malta.