Nicola De Marte fined thousands of dollars for “commercial sabotage”

The director of a Bunbury-based crane hire business has been ordered to pay more than $10,000 for damaging a rival company’s crane by cutting a boom retractor cable while undertaking construction work at the Harvey Beef abattoir. Nicola De Marte, 61, was handed down a $3000 dollar fine for criminal damage last Friday afternoon at Bunbury Magistrate’s Court, with more than $7000 in court expenses and victim reimbursement also ordered by the court. In November 2020, De Marte visited the Harvey Beef abattoir to help with construction work that was being undertaken at the site by his company Halifax Crane Hire. At the time of offending, Hotweld Fabrication was at the abattoir the day prior erecting a steel structure that would later become an extension to a chiller room. However, when Hotweld Fabrication returned to work the following Monday, the crane had been rendered inoperable due to the boom retractor cable being severed, which the court found De Marte guilty of causing. While the maximum penalty for an offence of this kind is multiple years jail time, Magistrate Benjamin Tyers said he believed the large fine was “the cost of justice.” “No one was in danger however ... it’s an act of commercial sabotage and it was petty in nature,” he said. The defence also applied for a spent conviction on De Marte’s behalf, however Mr Tyers denied the application, saying the social and business impacts were consequential. “I accept your reputation is damaged, that’s obvious ... but that’s something of your own doing, you’ve caused that,” he said. The long-awaited sentencing came after a six-day bench trial in February of this year, followed by a further hearing in April before the guilty verdict was announced on June 10.