In a court hearing earlier today, anti-corruption activist Robert Aquilina formally submitted an appeal to rescind a magistrate’s request to investigate sources who leaked the conclusions of the Pilatus inquiry.
Today’s hearing is the latest in a long-standing dispute between Repubblika, the anti-corruption NGO of which Aquilina is honorary president, and police commissioner Angelo Gafa’.
Aquilina’s appeal was filed in response to a judgement handed down by magistrate Nadine Lia in January. Lia presided over challenge proceedings which Aquilina had filed against the police commissioner. The appeal is being presided over by judge Consuelo Scerri Herrera.
The original case revolved around the police commissioner’s steadfast refusal to prosecute five former Pilatus officials who were named in the conclusions of the Pilatus Bank inquiry.
Generally speaking, the police had repeatedly failed to take action throughout the entire Pilatus Bank saga, including through Gafa’s disgraced predecessor Lawrence Cutajar.
Following the inquiry’s conclusion in March 2021, Aquilina began receiving information from confidential sources. These same sources confirmed the facts which Aquilina later presented under oath in front of magistrate Lia.
The Pilatus inquiry’s conclusions recommended criminal action to be taken against former operations manager Mehmet Tasli, former director and company secretary Rivera Luis Felipe, director and owner of the bank Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, former director Ghambari Hamidreza, and former director and money laundering reporting officer (MLRO) Antoniella Gauci.
After receiving detailed information about these significant conclusions, Aquilina had challenged the police commissioner to follow through on the inquiring magistrate’s recommendations. Almost four years later, not one charge has been issued against the individuals in question.
On the contrary, the only action taken by the office of the attorney general was to issue a nolle prosequi – an order not to prosecute – two of the former bank officials, Gauci and Tasli.
As for the police, European Arrest Warrants (EAWs) for the individuals in question were issued more than a year after the inquiry’s conclusions were handed over to the attorney general.
In her judgement, magistrate Nadine Lia had effectively rubbished the evidence which Aquilina submitted, describing it as “hearsay”.
In her ruling, the magistrate did not refer to the fact that three police officers testified that the contents of the evidence submitted by Aquilina were accurate and truthful.
While dismissing the evidence submitted by Aquilina as hearsay, the magistrate nonetheless went out of her way to order a police investigation into how Aquilina obtained this information.
During today’s hearing, Aquilina’s lawyer Jason Azzopardi argued that this duality presented a contradiction: Aquilina’s evidence cannot be simultaneously considered to be both hearsay and a verified leak of confidential information.
Azzopardi also pointed out discrepancies in what the magistrate noted in her judgement. One such discrepancy was an incorrect reference to the number of individuals cited within one forensic analysis report which was commissioned to better inform the inquiry about the bank’s operations.
Another referred to the way in which Lia’s judgement in Aquilina’s case clashes with established jurisprudence for cases involving such leaks.
Citing numerous examples of precedent to substantiate his argument, Azzopardi emphasized that Lia’s judgement leans on the argument that Aquilina should not have had access to the inquiry’s conclusions in the first place.
In reality, Maltese jurisprudence clearly emphasises that the only relevant criteria for leaked information is whether it is valid in the context of the case, not how it was obtained.
“Every judge has their own autonomy, but destroying 60 years of jurisprudence is certainly not prudent,” the lawyer remarked.
Magistrate Nadine Lia had also refuted the challenge proceedings against the police commissioner on the basis that the police’s investigation was “stagnant” due to the lack of response from foreign jurisdictions in relation to the enforcement of the EAWs issued by the police.
In today’s appeal hearing, Azzopardi argued that there is nothing holding the police back from issuing charges and that his client’s decision to publish the inquiry’s conclusions had to occur precisely because of the police’s inaction.
“When we see the overwhelming, extraordinary evidence submitted by the appellant, which exposes what the state wished to keep hidden, this was more than just speculation or hearsay,” Azzopardi stated.
Ramon Bonett Sladden, the lawyer who was representing the office of the attorney general, told the court that the police commissioner was not in a position to follow up on what was requested in the challenge proceedings, arguing that this was the prerogative of the attorney general.
“Our position is that the challenge proceedings were futile. Even if the appellant’s request was valid, we would have ended up with two prosecutions: one led by the police and the other led by the attorney general,” Bonett Sladden argued.
“We do not believe there was inertia from the police force in this case. The police’s operations in this case indicate that there was a reasonable and legitimate investigation,” the state’s lawyer added.
In an audibly incredulous tone, Azzopardi quickly rebutted that there was no such prosecution from the state.
“Dividing what prosecution exactly? No charges have been filed because the state does not want to prosecute these individuals. This is brazen and crass inaction on the part of the state,” Azzopardi exclaimed.
Judge Scerri Herrera is expected to hand down a decision on Aquilina’s appeal by 20 March.