The magistrate’s court has rejected a request for a fresh inquiry into the dealings of minister Konrad Mizzi and the prime minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri, referring the complainants to an inquiry that is already under way.
The request was made by former Opposition leader Simon Busuttil and Nationalist Party MEP David Casa last month, following fresh revelations from the Daphne Project.
The pair had requested a criminal inquiry into Mizzi, Schembri, Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna and Karl Cini and Mario Pullicino, the Malta agent for the gas floating storage unit.
The request was based on a leaked email that showed how Dubai-based company 17 Black was intended to be a ‘target client’ for the Panama companies Mizzi and Schembri had set up. The contents of the email were later confirmed by Schembri, who admitted 17 Black was inserted in a draft business plan but no trading was ever carried out.
However, in its decision, Magistrate Francesco Depasquale this morning said that “it is not in the best interest of justice to have double, or even triple” investigations on the same case since this will lead to “unnecessary waste of resources and disrupts the efficient conduct of such a complex investigation”.
Depasquale said the new allegation concerned a crime on which an inquiry had already been requested in July last year.
He ruled that the fresh evidence, in the form of an email, should have been presented in the original case.
The magistrate also said that there was no evidence to substantiate the opening of an inquiry into Pullicino.
The July 2017 inquiry refers to a request made by Busuttil shortly after the general election for a criminal probe into Panama Papers, through which it transpired that Mizz and Schembri had opened companies in the central American country.
Magistrate Ian Farrugia had ruled there were enough grounds for a criminal inquiry to start, at the end of which it would be determined whether a criminal investigation was warranted.
However, the Panama Papers inquiry has since stalled after the people called into question, including Mizzi, Schembri and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, appealed the ruling, insisting that similar inquiries were already under way.
The appeals process is still underway.