Henley and Partners, the firm that operates Malta’s citizenship for sale scheme, has confirmed that it sought the advice of the Prime Minister and other government officials as it pondered taking legal action against journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, a PN MP and the three independent media houses.
It also said it was normal for it to be on a first name basis with government officials.
Yesterday, Mrs Caruana Galizia published part of a leaked email chain which purportedly shows that Henley sought – and received – the PM’s approval to threaten to take legal action in an attempt to stop stories being written about it and the controversial passport for sale scheme. At some point it was decided to focus only on Caruana Galizia.
The blogger also revealed that the Prime Minister, his chief of staff Keith Schembri, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici, and Jonathan Cardona, who is the IIP CEO, all used @josephmuscat.com email addresses rather than their official @gov.mt addresses. This, she said, was done so that the email correspondence would not pass through the government email servers.
Replying to Mrs Caruana Galizia, Henley CEO Chris Kalin said: “The decision to commence action against you in relation to defamatory and untrue publications published on your blog was taken by Henley & Partners. Given that some of the articles about which we were complaining involved members of the government (which allegations you have since acknowledged were wrong and defamatory, and some of which you have removed from your blog), it was perfectly appropriate to seek their approval to proceed with invoking our legal rights against you. Indeed we would do so again for matters of such nature that also relate to members of the government.”
“As you know we have a good working relationship with this government, as we did with the previous government, and it is entirely normal that we go by first names, as we did with anyone else in this and in the previous government.”
Mr Kalin said that the way Mrs Caruana Galizia had “misconstrued our dealings and communications with the Maltese government is mischievous and wrong, and designed in order to further your own political objectives.”