The alleged meeting between Economy Minister Chris Cardona and murder suspect Alfred Degiorgio at a Siggiewi bar never took place, according to Malta Today.

The newspaper today reports that the person who had made the claim with the Daphne Project later admitted with the police that he had lied about the entire thing.

MT also says that a number of court experts were fed misleading information to weed out leaks from the inquiry.

The Malta Independent has received similar information.

Last week, this newspaper revealed that an alleged phone call between shipowner Pierre Darmanin and Chris Cardona did not take place.

Italian newspaper La Repubblica had reported that Daphne Caruana Galizia, after writing a blog about fuel smugglers being blown up with car bombs, had been called by Darmanin. The shipowner, who had been earlier named in connection with fuel smuggling, called Cardona and Alfred Degiorgio soon after hanging up with the journalist, the newspaper claimed.

But foreign and local sources later told this newspaper that it was Darmaning who called Caruana Galizia, and that there was no record of a phone call from Darmanin to Cardona. The phone call from Darmanin to Degiorgio, on the other hand, was confirmed.

La Repubblica had also reported that Cardona and Degiorgio had attended the same bachelor’s party in June 2017.

Now, Malta Today has reported that an alleged meeting between Cardona and Degiorgio at a Siggiewi bar never took place. Earlier this year, the Daphne Project said a source had told it that he had seen Cardona chatting to Degiorgio at Ferdinand’s bar in Siggiewi. But the source later told the police that he had only seen them visiting the bar separately, on different occasions, MT reports.

The newspaper also reported that footage from a property close to the bar had been elevated by a court expert in December 2017. For some reason, the footage, which was inconclusive, was not included in Magistrate Anthony Vella’s inquiry. When the Daphne Project story came out in April 2018, the police went to elevate the footage but were told that it had already been taken by the court expert some months earlier.

Malta Today says that, contrary to what has been reported, the Economy Minister had been interviewed by the police, and had released a statement to Inspector Keith Arnaud. On the other hand, it was reported, Magistrate (now Judge) Anthony Vella, never interviewed Cardona.

In a recent statement, Cardona told the police that he had not been invited to the Fawwara bachelor’s party but rather had been invited there by the bachelor - who happens to be the son of the Ferdinand bar owner – at a late hour. Cardona told investigators he had only stayed at the party for around 10 minutes and had not met the accused during the time he spent there.

The newspaper also said that three officials were being suspected of leaking information from the inquiry to the foreign press. It says the leak was only identified after a new magistrate, Neville Camilleri, took over the inquiry.

“Highly-placed officials working on the murder investigation fed inaccurate information to court experts in a bid to weed out those speaking to reporters and politicians,” Malta Today said. The planted information was related to the alleged phone call between Pierre Darmanin and Chris Cardona. 

In a Facebook post, Cardona said: “This narrative being concocted for political gain is shameful. Once again, allegations made in my regard prove to be false.”