A ruling by the Speaker of the House of Representatives over Jason Azzopardi’s breach of parliamentary privilege has not tamed the Opposition MPs’ insistence that Justice Minister Owen Bonnici had lied to Parliament on the Henley & Partners Individual Investment Programme contract, and that he had done so before.
Minister Owen Bonnici, on the other hand, is still expecting an apology from Jason Azzopardi and has dismissed the allegations levelled by the Nationalist MP.
Dr Azzopardi is still claiming that Dr Bonnici lied back in 2014 when he said that a court decree had been issued to withhold commercially sensitive parts of the contract signed with Henley & Partners for the IIP cash-for-passports scheme.
This is a separate issue to the one which led Dr Bonnici to raise a breach of privilege complaint against Dr Azzopardi, and concerns an incident that took place in 2014.
When asked by this newspaper to react to the lingering accusation this week, Dr Bonnici confirmed what Dr Azzopardi said – that the court never issued a decree for the government to withhold parts of the contract, but he explained that the omission of the clauses came from of a court verbal (record of the sitting).
This, according to Dr Azzopardi, means that the courts had never actually ‘ordered’ Dr Bonnici to leave part of the contracts hidden.
This, in fact, is the Minister’s clarification to Dr Azzopardi’s claims that Dr Bonnici ‘intentionally misled’ a parliamentary committee when saying that the government’s objection to making the full contract available to the committee had been based on a court decree. After clarifying that the omission of details from the contract was on account of a verbal and not a decree as he had previously stated back in 2014. Dr Bonnici insists that this should be considered as a court order.
In February 2014 the government tabled the contract signed between Henley & Partners and itself, while omitting 14 clauses that relate to ‘commercially sensitive material’. Opposition Public Accounts Committee (PAC) members had argued that the clauses blacked out renders the parliamentary committee unable to thoroughly scrutinise the contract.
In a May 2014 PAC session, the issue of the Henley & Partners contract was raised, with Shadow Minister for Justice Jason Azzopardi demanding the government present the full document for the committee’s scrutiny.
Minister Bonnici objected on the grounds that there was a court decree precluding the government from being able to table the full document. He said the government’s hands were tied and it had to “bow its head” to the wishes of the courts, which ordered the full document to be kept under lock and key.
He was referring to the Arton Capital v the Government of Malta case. Arton Capital had applied for a judicial review of the government’s decision to choose Henley & Partners as the winners of the IIP tender.
In civil cases, all court documents and legal recourses relating to a particular case are placed in the court registry. Being public documents, the general public is allowed access to such documents. In view of this, the government asked Judge Joseph Micallef presiding over the case, not to place the contract in the registry, but to instead make it accessible only to the parties privy to the case due to the “commercially sensitive material” contained within.
In May 2014, PAC Chairman, PN MP Tonio Fenech, requested a ruling from Speaker Anglu Farrugia on whether the PAC has the right to demand the contract. Dr Farrugia had confirmed as much and ruled that the PAC was empowered to demand that the contract between the government and IIP concessionaires Henley & Partners be presented to the committee.
Dr Farrugia confirmed that Parliament was sovereign and could discuss anything in the national interest, apart from not being subject to what takes place in the Law Courts.
Essentially, the Speaker sent the issue back to the PAC, however the committee would have needed the backing of at least one government PAC member in order to reach a majority and demand the publication of the contract. For obvious reasons, this did not happen and the issue stopped there.
Shadow Minister Azzopardi, in comments to this newsroom, has stated that Dr Bonnici purposely misled PAC when he said the government’s hands were tied due to a court decree. He said there was no court decree. Dr Azzopardi and Deputy PN Leader Beppe Fenech Adami had called a press conference to highlight how Dr Bonnici “intentionally misguided” the parliamentary committee when objecting on the grounds of a court decree. Interestingly, no reaction by the Justice Minister could be found to the statements made by the PN members, no denial or declarations of seeking redress, either through the courts or through a request of the Speaker’s ruling.
Confronted yesterday with questions relating to the claims made by the PN Opposition, the Minister said that Dr Azzopardi should stop trying to deflect attention from the fact that he was caught ‘prime facie’ breaching parliamentary privilege.
“For some reason, Dr Azzopardi is resorting to an issue which was originally raised and dealt with by the Speaker three years ago. Instead of using these tactics, Jason Azzopardi should apologise to me. It is the Speaker that decides if I lied in Parliament or not, not Jason Azzopardi,” he added.
The Malta Independent on Sunday has seen a transcript of the verbal where Mr Justice Micallef accepted the government’s request not to have the full contract placed in the registry, and stated that it would be made available to the courts as well as all those privy to the case.
This newsroom was unable to find a copy of the court decree precluding the government from presenting the full contract from being scrutinised by the PAC. Government spokespersons have said that publishing the full document would breach confidentiality agreements and, in a Freedom of Information request sent by this newsroom for full copy of the contract, it was stated that should the government accept the request it would have “a substantial adverse effect on the ability of the government to manage the Maltese economy”.