Watch our summary of today’s proceedings by clicking here.
You can also read our full live blog by clicking here.
EN translation of the summary clip:
If you had to ever hear out a testimony about alleged money laundering involving millions of euros, do you think you’d remember it?
Apparently, if former police inspector Anthony Scerri had to answer that question, the answer might be more of a no than a yes.
Yet again, in the fourth production we are publishing live from court this week, I find myself talking about the impressive amount of disinterest shown by police officials in the concession case.
Former inspector Scerri skirted so many questions from the defence that eventually, magistrate Leonard Caruana had to order him to testify again during another hearing after he is given permission to revise the police file.
Specifically, he said he did not remember several details about hearings in which some of the accused had testified in front of the inquiring magistrate, which is why he will now need to reread police’s internal notes which he said were kept by them from that time.
Scerri had tried to ask for permission to access this file so as to be able to adequately testify in the cases he is currently a witness in but had not been given permission by the police commissioner to do so.
As you may probably know from following our other episodes on this case, we’ve seen quite a few rough moments in the way our legal system tried to cope with the complexity of the case and the large amount of evidence involved.
One of the problems we’ve seen was in how the accused said they did not have access to all of the documents in the inquiry. Magistrate Caruana filed a formal request with the office of the President of Malta to extend the terms of the first phase of the case so all parties can have what the law calls ‘equality of arms’ when it comes to the amount of time spent reviewing evidence.
We also saw a lot of disagreement between the prosecution and the defence about how to interpret money laundering laws. Prosecutor Rebekah Spiteri stated that the only legal obligation imposed on the prosecution is to list and indicate the assets which are meant to be targeted by a freezing order.
The defence, which repeatedly interrupted Spiteri’s intervention, insisted that to justify freezing orders which amount to millions of euros, the prosecution needs to testify about how they came up with the figures cited in the various freezing orders issued in this case, above and beyond the 1,200 pages in the inquiry report which documents the conclusions of the inquiring magistrate.
The next sitting in the case of the Republic of Malta v disgraced former health minister Chris Fearne and his former associates and colleagues continues on 27 June.
See you next week.
