AG says copy of Egrant inquiry report sent to justice minister, but not to Opposition leader
Attorney General Peter Grech said in court yesterday that he had emailed the full Egrant inquiry report to Justice Minister Owen Bonnici, despite refusing to provide the Opposition with a copy.
The attorney general took the witness stand before Judge Robert Mangion for a lengthy grilling by lawyer Vince Galea – appearing for Leader of the Opposition Adrian Delia, who has demanded a copy of the inquiry report.
Attorney General Grech said he had forwarded the inquiry to Bonnici as an attachment to a blank email. In addition to the justice minister, a copy was also sent to the Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s lawyer, Pawlu Lia. The attorney general told the court, however, that he was certain that the prime minister hadn’t made the inquiry available to others.
“After midday, I received a letter from Dr [Pawlu] Lia on behalf of the prime minister and his wife saying that the inquiry should be published… I didn’t feel it was right to just up and publish the inquiry, as it was voluminous and needed to be read through.”
Doing so, he insisted, would reveal and banking information and methods relating to third parties not in the public sphere.
“I felt the prime minister’s argument was valid, as he needed the full evidential basis of the inquiry. In my opinion… to be released to the prime minister, I felt this should be upheld. Subsequently, the prime minister sought advice as to whether or not the report should be published. The justice minister asked if I had an electronic copy and I passed it on to him as he is a lawyer assisting the prime minister in the analysis of the inquiry.”
Galea seized on this point. “Is the justice minister therefore a lawyer for the prime minister?”
“I know he was assisting him and so I passed on a copy to him. I understand that the prime minister isn’t going to be looking at it alone; he has people assisting him in studying it.”
Asked if the copy given to the prime minister had been altered, the attorney general replied: “The Office of the Attorney General does not redact its inquiries.”
Galea pressed the attorney general as to why he had not released a copy to the Opposition leader or at least informed him that it had been concluded, but Grech replied that he had released a statement once he had been given a copy of the report.
“I made it clear in the statement I released in July that the inquiry wasn’t going to be published in full, despite requests coming in from all angles. It contained private banking information belonging to people who had nothing to do with the issue… I didn’t feel it was right to be made public.”
The attorney general said this inquiry was different from those into the Paqpaqli crash or PlusOne incident – both of which were made public – in that “this one has parts that need to be investigated further. Publishing [the report] could cause harm to privacy and future investigations,” he explained.
“Have you ever shown journalists copies of inquiry reports?” asked Galea.
“There was a case where someone had died at the [police] depot and it was decided that the process verbal should be made available to journalists, but copies were not given,” the attorney general said.
“The same happened with an inquiry into an explosion at a fireworks factory. As for the PlusOne and Paqpaqli inquiries, I gave the justice minister copies on his request. I knew he was going to publish them.”
But those inquiries had conclusively ended, with fault established and people arraigned, he said. This was not the case with Egrant.
“Were the conclusions published in their entirety?” asked Galea. “The principal conclusions were,” the attorney general replied.
The case is set to continue on 9 October.