Rosianne Cutajar could be involved in more corruption than reported, Mark Camilleri tells court

Author Mark Camilleri has told a court that the scale of the corruption in which former Labour junior minister Rosianne Cutajar is involved “could be much larger” than what has been reported.

Cutajar, now an independent MP, having resigned her membership of the Labour Party after Camilleri published transcripts of thousands of chats between her and Yorgen Fenech, once again failed to appear for today’s sitting in the libel case she filed against the author.

Today’s was the third consecutive no-show by Cutajar in this case and comes less than 24 hours after she attended a court sitting in a criminal harassment case she had filed against Camilleri.

Her unexplained absence apparently also caught her counsel by surprise, and it was only towards the end of the sitting that lawyer Edward Gatt, who is representing Cutajar together with lawyer Mark Vassallo, told magistrate Rachel Montebello that he had only just communicated with her and did not wish to air the reason for her absence in a public sitting.

Gatt offered to bind himself to ensure that his client would attend the next sitting.

Lawyer Joseph Mizzi, appearing for Camilleri, declined to proceed by reference to the oath of the defendant - a legal procedure whereby the other party is deemed to have conceded the case by virtue of their absence - and informed the court that he would be summonsing Cutajar as a witness for the defence, instead.

Mark Camilleri, who was also due to testify today, took the witness stand instead. His lawyer asked him what the impugned Facebook post had been about.

“I wrote a book called ‘A Rent Seekers Paradise’ and was uploading extracts of it on Facebook to promote it. One of the extracts dealt with the illicit and corrupt relationship between Cutajar and Yorgen Fenech.”

Preponderant evidence showed that Fenech had been laundering money for disgraced former energy minister Konrad Mizzi and the former OPM Chief of Staff Keith Schembri over the Electrogas project, Camilleri told the court.

“The relationship [between Fenech and Cutajar] was corrupt, where money and favours were exchanged, and so I investigated. It was corrupt because Fenech was being investigated for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, at around the same time that information emerged about Fenech being the owner of 17 Black. 17 Black was the Dubai company which was to be used by Fenech to send money to Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri… at this time, Rosianne knew about 17 Black and that Fenech was being investigated in connection with it. We know that at the time, Fenech had been in a relationship with her… in spite of this, Rosianne had stood up for him, both in the Maltese Parliament and before the Council of Europe.”

“She claimed that the money she received from Fenech was from a property deal, when she had no experience in the real estate business and Fenech had no need to use her,” he said.

“Their relationship was not disclosed. In fact, her failure to ever disclose this relationship itself indicates its illicit nature. Cutajar likes to post photos of herself and various boyfriends on Facebook, but never Fenech,” Camilleri explained to the court.

“She also defended the government’s activity with respect to Electrogas, Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri… regularly and openly defending all the corruption in which Fenech was involved, including with Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri.”

Camilleri also pointed out that the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life had also reported Cutajar’s property deal with Fenech as a possible crime, in addition to being a heinous breach of ethics, Camilleri said.

Mizzi asked the defendant to explain whether the money had been exchanged before or after her speech before the European Council.

“It was given before, but these are only the monies we know about. Yorgen also took her to Paris and bought property before all this. What we know is from the WhatsApp chats, but the scale could be much larger,” he said.

Camilleri told the court that he had evidence which showed that government MPs had not only used Whatsapp in their communications with Fenech, but had also used Signal “for more sensitive communications.”

“When I had published the story, both in my book and as well as on Facebook, I had been aware of the content of the chats, so what I was saying, objectively from my position, had been proven by substantial evidence.”

Replying to a question from Gatt, Camilleri said the book had been “written in 2021 and published in 2021.”

“Did you write it in one year?” asked the lawyer. “In three months,” Camilleri replied.

The case was adjourned to November for Cutajar’s testimony.