5 June 2014
L of a farce as
taxpayer faces £3,000 translation bill over theft of 10p carrier bags
Taxpayers have been left with a £3,000 bill when a
Lithuanian was prosecuted for stealing two plastic bags worth 10p each - and a
Latvian speaker was sent to translate for him.
Tadas
Tarkutis, 26, was arrested after he swiped the two ‘bags for life’ from
Sainsbury’s in Scarborough. Officers found a Lithuanian translator who made a
120-mile round trip from Harrogate, to spend around four hours with him in
custody.
But
the same translator was not available when Tarkutis appeared in court the
following morning and a Latvian speaker was mistakenly summoned from the
outsourcing firm Capita.
The
woman set off from Rugby in the Midlands, only to find she had made a wasted
six-hour, 320-mile round trip when she arrived at the magistrates court in
Scarborough.
With
no-one able to speak for him, Tarkutis was remanded in custody and returned to
the court the following day.
This
time a Lithuanian translator was correctly supplied by Capita and after all the
cost and confusion the thief admitted the petty crime.
Tarkutis,
from Birmingham, was jailed for six weeks because he was in breach of a
suspended sentence. But he was not ordered to pay any court costs.
One
court source said: “It was as if someone somewhere had just picked out a
country that begins with ‘L’. It was ridiculous.”
Andy
Silvester of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “Criminals must always be brought
to justice, but this seems a remarkable amount of taxpayers’ money to spend on
a rather minor case.
“Ordinary
people rightly expect justice, but they don’t expect it to cost over the odds.
“Avoidable
errors have only put the cost up more.”
The
Crown Prosecution Service said the court’s decision to jail Tarkutis validated
the decision to bring the case to court.
Capita,
who describe themselves as a translation company “you can rely on”, has not yet
commented.
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