I wouldn’t start a magisterial inquiry on a simple blog – former AG

Former Attorney General Peter Grech yesterday defended controversial decisions, saying that he had turned down a suggestion by former assistant police commissioner Silvio Valletta for a magisterial inquiry to be launched on Pilatus Bank.

“I had said that on a simple blog post I wouldn’t start a magisterial inquiry,” the former AG said when testifying in the public inquiry investigating whether the state could have done more to prevent the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed in a car bomb on 16 October, 2017.

Grech held the post of Attorney General for 10 years before resigning in September.

Former police commissioner Lawrence Cutajar had testified that Valletta had been advised by Grech that all the police had was a blog and no disclosure and this didn’t justify a police raid on the bank.

Grech testified that Valletta had approached him on 20 April 2016, near his office and said that they were thinking of requesting a magisterial inquiry. Valletta had called him again later to ask him to confirm that

he was against a magisterial inquiry. “I had confirmed that the blog post was not enough to initiate a magisterial inquiry.”

Asked about Valletta’s removal from the Caruana Galizia murder investigation, Grech said the court had said that the work done until then was still valid. “Our principal fear was that this would annul all the work we had done,” he added.

The Caruana Galizia family had sought a court order to have Valletta removed from the investigation, citing a conflict of interest given his marriage to a Cabinet minister and his role on the FIAU board. The court had acceded to the request and ordered Valletta off the case.

With regard to reports drawn up by the FIAU, Grech said that it is not the duty of the attorney general to scrutinise their reports. “The decision to arrest is one for the police to take,” he said.

On 2 March 2016, the FIAU had asked Nexia BT for documents, which were handed over, but it became suspicious that not all the information was received, Grech said. The request had come a few weeks after the Panama Papers had been revealed, exposing that companies had been opened in Panama by former chief of staff Keith Schembri and then minister Konrad Mizzi.

Grech said that on 16 May, he had been asked for advice by the FIAU on whether Nexia BT offices could be raided. “The argument of going there and looking at the servers and hoping to find something there was still not good,” he said.

The former attorney general said there was a question as to whether it was money laundering or an attempt at money laundering, with Caruana Galizia lawyer Therese Comodini Cachia pointing out that the two issues are punished exactly the same way.

Grech said that shortly after Caruana Galizia was murdered in October 2017, he had received an email from the German prosecutor’s office, suggesting that the crime could have been linked to the Panama Papers leak and the German authorities were willing to co-operate on the matter. Grech had passed the information to then-inquiring Magistrate Anthony Vella. Magistrate Aaron Bugeja, who led the Egrant inquiry, had also travelled to Germany to check out that information.

Asked repeatedly about legal advice he had been asked to give in various circumstances, Grech said that his advice was “flexible”. He had suggested that the police should ensure they have strong suspicion before taking action. “This was misinterpreted by the media as a ‘go slow’. This is not true,” Grech said.

The public inquiry into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia is tasked with, amongst other things, determining whether the State did all it could to prevent the murder from happening.

Three men – George Degiorgio, Alfred Degiorgio and Vince Muscat – have been charged with carrying out the assassination, while Yorgen Fenech is charged with masterminding the murder.

Melvin Theuma, who acted as a middleman between Fenech and the three killers, was granted a presidential pardon last year to tell all.

The inquiry is led by retired judge Michael Mallia and includes former chief justice Joseph Said Pullicino and Judge Abigail Lofaro.

For a full account of yesterday’s session, please visit www.independent.com.mt