Yorgen Fenech’s lawyers Gianluca Caruana Curran and Charles Mercieca will face charges in court over their alleged attempt to bribe a journalist, the Times of Malta said on Thursday.

Caruana Curran and Mercieca got themselves into hot water when they allegedly offered several €500 notes to Times of Malta journalist Ivan Martin after a meeting about their client.

Martin rejected the money and immediately reported the matter to his editors, after which a police investigation was launched.

The case will be heard on Monday, with Martin, and Times of Malta editors Herman Grech and Diana Cacciottolo summoned to testify.

Fenech's legal team had claimed that the journalist led it to believe he was offering to help "neutralise the bias in the reporting in the media." It said it was not privy to his terms of employment with Times of Malta and the journalist only mentioned that he works full-time at the newspaper after he was offered remuneration for his "services."

Martin has been a journalist with the Times of Malta since 2013, and Times of Malta editor in chief had said in reaction to the Fenech defence team’s arguments that at no point in his conversation did Martin indicate he was an investigator, and that Caruana Curran himself said in his initial reaction to the incident that he had never dealt with journalists – hence implying that he knew that Martin was a journalist himself.