A judge has upheld a request by the NGO Repubblika and ordered the Attorney General to exhibit extracts of the 2020 magisterial inquiry into Pilatus Bank.

In a decree handed down on Monday morning, Madam Justice Doreen Clarke said that Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg had “limited herself to repeating her view that such a summons ought not to have been issued because this court does not have the power to authorise the handing over of documents which form part of an inquiry.”

But the court said that it was unmoved by the Attorney General’s arguments and submissions, finding no reason to add or vary its previous decree on the matter.

This means that the Registrar of the Courts will be summoned to the witness stand to exhibit the extracts of the magisterial which Repubblika had identified.

These extracts include the inquiry file – known as the proces verbal, the report by forensic experts Duff & Phelps which found that Pilatus Bank officials were involved in the laundering of criminal funds, the report on Magistrate Ian Farrugia’s inquiry and conclusions, and his order for new investigations into money transfers to the once-secret company Egrant.

The registrar will take the witness stand during the next sitting in the case on 17 June.

Former Repubblika President and the organisation’s legal and judicial representative Robert Aquilina wrote on social media that the ruling will “allow the court to see with its own eyes that what I published a year ago… is the truth and nothing but the truth.”

Aquilina had published a book which included the said magisterial inquiry which investigated Pilatus Bank.

“The Attorney General has been performing legal somersaults for over a year to oppose this request, but the court today upheld Repubblika’s request and rejected Victoria Buttigieg’s misleading arguments,” Aquilina said.

Lawyer Jason Azzopardi assisted Aquilina.