The Office of the Prime Minister has remained mum on whether it will be taking any action against Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg.

The court earlier this week found that testimony delivered by Borg in a libel case instituted by a third party against The Malta Independent was ‘hard to believe’. The case dealt with the sale of a piece of land in Dingli back in 2014, by a man with mental health issues to then Parliamentary Secretary Ian Borg.

Mark Farrugia had filed a libel case against Rachel Attard, Stephen Calleja and David Lindsay on behalf of The Malta Independent on Sunday over an article titled ‘Family incensed as PS buys land from mentally-ill father’ that was published in 2015. Farrugia was one of the middlemen in the sale. The court, presided over by Magistrate Victor Axiak, ruled in favour of The Malta Independent, which was represented by lawyer Peter Fenech.

In its sentence, the courts said that it had found Borg’s testimony and that of his middleman, that they did not know of Anthony Scicluna’s mental health conditions, not to be credible.

Borg had been asked by The Malta Independent whether he would be handing in his resignation after the courts found that his testimony was “not credible” and implied that a mentally-ill man had been taken advantage of in a property purchase.

“That is what you and your newspaper are saying in the spin you gave to what the court respectfully said”, Borg said. He noted that the most important point from the sentence is that it is not true that the middleman took the person who had sold him the land – Anthony Scicluna – drinking before the deal was signed. He had argued that he had signed other contracts with the man in question in the past and there were never any issues brought up.

The Malta Independent subsequently sent questions to the Prime Minister, asking if whether the Prime Minister will be calling for Borg’s resignation, or if he will take any action against him.

No answers were received by the time this article was written.