Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi said he will be filing libel proceedings against Justice Minister Owen Bonnici for the “lie he invented” this morning and “comments he said I made about Zaren Vassallo”. This is a lie “from start to finish” and Owen Bonnici will have to answer for this in court, Dr Azzopardi said.

In a statement, Dr Azzopardi said that “Owen Bonnici and the most corrupt government in history” are so desperate to defend themselves from the scandals engulfing the government that they are not believing the Auditor General and inventing things he did not say.

“The Auditor General found nothing wrong in my regard so much so that Michael Falzon had attacked him” for taking a different approach in his regard.

“After it was confirmed that I was not part of any deal – contrary to what Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi did in the Café Premier and SOCAR Azerbaijan cases – Owen Bonnici and his lying government started to invent things that the Auditor General never said,” Dr Azzopardi said.

Owen Bonnici is so hypocritical that 15 months after the Auditor General reported that the law was being breached in the deal reached by the government and the General Workers Union on property in Valletta, the Justice Minister did not take any action.

In a statement, the Labour Party described Jason Azzopardi's reaction as hysterical.