Neither the police, nor the magistrate leading the inquiry into the allegations surrounding Adrian Delia's alleged money laundering in Soho had sent for Delia, the politician told the public inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia on Wednesday afternoon.

Delia told the panel of three judges that he had been hurt by a series of stories by Caruana Galizia, which implied that he had been involved in money laundering. "This hurt me a lot. I had been an advocate for 25 years and never had any mention of abuse."

He was asked about one of the most memorable public incidents between him and the murdered journalist, which was when he used the phrase "bicca blogger" to describe her. "This was one of the things which remained in the public consciousness... I had felt offended, " Delia said. "Once, twice, three times I had apologised for this and it is something I regret saying" Delia insisted, adding later that he would still defend her right to write what she wrote, despite disagreeing with her.

Asked about the Panama Papers, Delia said that "certainly it is not for me to eulogise the courage of Caruana Galizia in fighting big fights....I mention one that I am also involved in: Vitals... Not everyone has the courage to pursue such stories."

But asked why he didn't pursue similar court proceedings to his Vitals court case when the stories on 17 Black emerged, Delia said the two circumstances were not the same.

Delia also strenuously denied there ever having been a €50,000 donation to the PN from Yorgen Fenech, who is accused of masterminding the murder of Caruana Galizia, despite the Times of Malta having published chats allegedly showing this having been the case.

He said that the chats may have taken place, but that "nothing special" was said in them. "But I don't have them," he explained, as he had deleted them.

Delia had visited Fenech's ranch once, as part of an event with many other people present, he said.

"What I can say is that there is no friendship, never was a friendship with Yorgen Fenech...no friendship, no intimacy, no relationship with Fenech."

Pierre Portelli also testified, and admitted to using Tumas magnate Yorgen Fenech to leak stories to the Labour Party on Delia's internal party critics and rebels.

He produced three case files containing what he said were 130 stories leaked by Delia's adversaries to the press. "I was desperate. I decided to fight fire with fire. As desperate as I was. I turned onto Yorgen Fenech and told him that there was a coup against the leader [Delia], 'do you have contacts at the Labour Party?'"

During his testimony, he said: "I believe politics, business and the media are too close in Malta," he said at one point. But then he revealed that he had contacted Yorgen Fenech in March 2019 to collect a donation to the PN, when he served as media chief after the election of Adrian Delia in 2017.

"Me being desperate to pay my salary bills I had contacted Yorgen Fenech to pay it up. I would not use it to directly pay salaries however. The company Media.Link would issue the salaries."

He was asked about an attempt to purchase the Malta Independent by Yorgen Fenech when Portelli was still working at the newspaper as editor-in-chief. Portelli confirmed that Fenech had shown interest in buying out Standard Publications, the publishers of the Malta Independent, at the time he was its editor-in-chief. Fenech had said DB Group boss Silvio Debono could show interest in the acquisition as well. The deal never took place.

Portelli had interviewed Maria Efimova, a former Pilatus employee charged with misappropriation of some bank cash funds, who had made claims about former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's wife being the owner of Egrant. 

 Portelli said he had asked Efimova for the UBO documents on Egrant but she had refused since investigating magistrate Aaron Bugeja had ordered her not to publish the documents. "She said that she had gone to the Russian embassy and had been warned that if she breached the magistrate's orders, she wouldn't be given a passport."