Magistrate must order criminal proceedings if FIAU report revealed – Manuel Mallia

Former minister and Labour MP Manuel Mallia said this morning that any magistrate presented with a leaked FIAU report was obliged to order criminal proceedings against the person disclosing the information.

On Monday, MEP David Casa will be presenting magistrate Aaron Bugeja with a leaked FIAU report he claims to have in possession, after requesting that he be allowed to do so last Friday. Casa claims that the report, related to the dealings of Tourism minister Konrad Mizzi, and is so damning that it represented the most serious case of corruption in Malta’s history.

Mizzi on his part has denounced the accusations as conjecture, insisting that Casa’s obsession with him was only intended to mask his “inefficacy as a politician”.  The FIAU has denied that the existence of any conclusive report on Mizzi.

Addressing a political activity in Qormi ahead of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Mallia stressed that anyone in possession of such a document was complicit in a criminal act.

“No FIAU report can be published and if it is it is a criminal offence,” said Mallia. “If someone alleges and says that they have this report, then it means they are complicit in a crime.”

He said that if anyone went to a magistrate to try an exhibit such a report, the magistrate would “undoubtedly tell him to think twice before implicating himself in such a crime”.

“If they still exhibit it, the magistrate must order that criminal proceedings are opened against them because the law is there fore everyone. This is the rule of law.”

READ ALSO: PN MEP David Casa takes leaked FIAU report to magistrate but refuses to publish it

Mallia insisted that the accusations levelled against the Prime Minister were intended discredit Muscat, and were driven by the Nationalist Party seeing its failure in the government’s success. 

He said the party’s “so-called strategists” had undertaken a campaign of ”lies, rumours and conjecture, to try and discredit Muscat and demoralise the Labour Party.

“They built an electoral campaign on Egrant, Pilatus, Panama, corruption,” said Mallia. In the face of all this, he said Muscat had gone to the nation and asked it to judge him and the government a second time. “He also went to magistrate so that he could be investigated.”

He accused Muscat’s opponents of hypocrisy. “They speak of the rule of law as if it meant their own reign, but they forget that the biggest pillar of the rule of law is the sovereignty of the nation as expressed in a democratic election.”

Mallia insisted that the rule of law did not mean allowing the “same hundred or so people” to dictate who should occupy different roles.

“They almost want to have a foreign Attorney General, a foreign Police Commissioner, and soon they will want us to leave Parliament so they can replace us with people from the European Parliament,” said Mallia.
He stressed that the law was there to be observed by everyone. “The rule of law does not mean that conjecture and suspicions are enough for our court. Our courts and investigators need proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Mallia said that the nation was not stupid, and knew that “if you had proof you would have brought it before the election”.