Keith Schembri's phones kept safely in courts' exhibits room, magistrate says

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech, who is presiding over the money laundering compilation of evidence against disgraced former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, has declared that his mobile phones, exhibited as evidence in those proceedings, had always been securely stored in the courts’ exhibits room.

The magistrate was addressing an allegation raised by Schembri’s lawyers last Monday, when they claimed that his right to a fair hearing had been breached because his mobile phone had been “lost” whilst in the court’s possession, and was found, months later, amongst the exhibits in another case.

In a brief sitting in the compilation proceedings on Friday, Frendo Dimech explained that all of the electronic equipment seized by the police during the magisterial inquiry into the alleged money laundering had been examined by forensic expert Martin Bajada.

Bajada had completed his tasks and had handed over a full copy of the data extracted from the devices, amounting to four terabytes, on a hard drive. That data, together with the expert’s report, had been exhibited in court during a sitting in the compilation of evidence last January. Copies of the data had been given to all the parties in the case, including Schembri, said the magistrate.

All the electronic equipment, including Schembri’s mobile phones - the magistrate stressing the plural - had been physically exhibited in July 2023, she said. Three days later, on August 3, the magistrate’s deputy registrar had handed the exhibits over to the court’s exhibits officer for safekeeping.  All the exhibits relating to Keith Schembri “remained in the possession and the exclusive, uninterrupted, custody of that official,” the magistrate said, adding that this fact could easily be confirmed.

The issue has its roots in a sitting on 11 October, but the magistrate clarified today that the device in question was not a phone but other unrelated apparatus that had been exhibited in the case against the directors of Zenith Finance, Matthew Pace and Lorraine Falzon.

On Monday, Schembri’s lawyers filed an application claiming that Schembri’s mobile phone had somehow ended up in the records of the Zenith case. But Magistrate Frendo Dimech today clarified that the equipment in the Zenith case had a different exhibit number and was part of the acts of separate proceedings which had been sent to the Criminal Court in April.

Those exhibits were never returned to her court, pointed out the Magistrate, adding that this fact, too, could easily be confirmed.
Data extracted from those exhibits had been extracted by another court expert, before they could be exhibited as evidence in the money laundering case against Schembri, his father and two business partners. 

That expert was ordered to attend the next sitting to testify about the matter.
After reading out the long minute, lawyer Mark Vassallo, appearing for Schembri, also dictated a short note, remarking that today’s sitting had been convened in an irregular manner, arguing that the law did not allow a sitting to happen less than a month after the previous one.

“So today’s sitting should not have happened, “ Vassallo said, adding that the defence wished to have this observation registered in the acts.
Prosecutor Antoine Agius Bonnici, from the Office of the Attorney General pointed out that shorter intervals were often used and that it was the court which appoints sittings and not the AG.

The case was adjourned to later this month.

Lawyer Antoine Agius Bonnici is prosecuting.  Lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo are appearing for Keith Schembri.