One of Keith Schembri’s long-standing lawyers has renounced his brief, less than two weeks after another lawyer did the same, Malta Today reports.

Lawyer Pawlu Lia formally renounced his brief with regards to Keith Schembri on December 5, according to court records, after the former OPM Chief of Staff was named in the investigation into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

On December 2, lawyer Andrew Sciberras had also dropped Schembri as a client in a separate libel suit against The Malta Independent.

Lia has not appeared for Schembri in some time. The last two libels he dealt with had been pending since 2016 and 2017, well before all of the recent developments. Since then, Schembri has always been assisted by lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo.