Prime Minister Robert Abela said on Sunday that the State had done all it could in order for cases like that of Yorgen Fenech can go to trial without delay.

“Hand on heart I can say that we couldn’t have done anything differently,” the Prime Minister said during a Labour Party activity.

Abela was interviewed on Sunday by journalists from Malta Daily, Lovin Malta, and L-Orizzont.

Asked for his reaction to the news that Yorgen Fenech – who stands accused of complicity in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia – was granted bail, Abela reminded that this was a decision which was exclusively in the court’s hands.

The State’s role is in the Attorney General’s office, which can either object to bail being granted or not – and in this case, Abela said, the AG had objected to every bail request that Fenech had filed, something which even Judge Edwina Grima had taken note of.

He observed that the court’s hands were not tied into granting bail, but noted that the court had imposed “extraordinary guarantees” that many in legal circles had never seen the lines of.  Abela said that the pledge that Fenech’s aunt had made is worth €52 million alone.

The Prime Minister continued that the government has no discretion on the date for when a jury is set.  He said that in this case, the accused had entered several preliminary exceptions which needed to be decided and a number of constitutional cases as well, while the AG’s office had also sought the testimony of the two hitmen found guilty of the murder as well.

He further noted that likely the main reason for the fact that the case is yet to be taken to jury is a request by the Caruana Galizia family – and he specified that he was in no way blaming the family for this – to have a court expert remove the identities of people who contributed to the slain journalist’s blog.

He said that the impression that the delay was due to a lack of resources was unfounded, and noted that the government had increased resources at both the AG’s office and the State Advocate’s office and also increased the complement of judges and magistrates by 34%.

“The State did all it could,” he said. “Hand on heart I can say that we couldn’t have done anything differently,” he added.

He disagreed with the notion that investigations are sometimes disorganised and said that if an individual files a constitutional case, for instance, it cannot simply be ignored. He said that the backlog of cases, particularly civil ones, had reduced significantly, as have delays, and commented on the government’s target to limit compilation of evidence procedures to a one year timeframe.

All in all though, he said that the statistics from 2013 and the present day are not even comparable, such has been the improvement.

Magistrate’s reform will include involvement of judges, rights to victims

Speaking about the controversial reform to magisterial inquiries that the Labour government is fast-tracking through Parliament, Abela said that the biggest interest in this is to see that justice is done and that systems are not abused.

“This reform is being done because too many people are going through criminal proceedings for no reason,” Abela said.  He referred to former Permanent Secretaries Alfred Camilleri and Joseph Rapa – who are both facing criminal charges in relation to the Vitals hospitals case – as examples.  Later during the interview, he also mentioned former ministers Chris Fearne and Edward Scicluna as such.

Abela said that the reform being envisaged will “not deny anybody access to justice” but will be “so that people are not forced to be subject to an inquiry based on conjecture or a newspaper article.”

He said that magisterial inquiries will not be eliminated but will be elevated in such a manner that they will involve a Judge.

The reform, he added, will also provide new statutory rights to the victims or to families of the victims to be informed about the progress of a magisterial inquiry.

He said that the reform will put a stop to the “mudslinging abuse” that he said is happening today.  “You place conjectures and an inquiry is opened,” he said.

He said that the judiciary today is being “used as a political tool” and that businesses are being “strategically targeted” by these requests for inquiries and that the threshold for an inquiry to be opened is actually far too low.

“All you need today is for an angry neighbour to go and say that they know you stole €1 million, have no proof of it, and an inquiry can still be opened,” Abela said.

The situation is such today that a magistrate has their hands tied in order to accept such a request, and because the law provides such a low grade of access for a magistrate, Abela said, the “absolute probability” is that whoever is subject to an inquiry will be charged.

He disagreed with the interpretation that people do not trust the police force to investigate political corruption, saying that this is an impression created by civil society groups who have no interest in actual rule of law.

One of the reforms to be introduced is that magisterial inquiries and police investigations will work in parallel and another is that the way experts are engaged for an inquiry will be addressed.

He commented on the Vitals case experts.  “The rates they were paid… €240 per hour… then they don’t want to testify, their qualifications are terrifying – these are things which will be addressed.  €11 million? We could have built a school with that,” he said, zeroing in on the cost of the inquiry.

Something else which will be reformed, Abela said, is the declaration of assets for MPs, which has been subject to some controversy in the past week, as the one for Cabinet members has not been tabled in Parliament.

Abela questioned what sense there is in there being two separate declaration of assets – one is submitted to Parliament and one to his office for scrutiny.  He said that the government plans to divest this overseeing power from the Prime Minister and combine declarations of assets into one process which all MPs will be obliged to do.

He said, for example, that Ministers today have an obligation to declare their income while MPs do not. “You have lawyers appearing for companies in tenders which they may later end up being politically responsible for,” Abela noted, as he said that introducing the obligation for all MPs to declare their income will increase transparency and reduce conflicts of interest.