Updated | Chris Cardona gives statement to lead investigator in Caruana Galizia murder

Economy minister Chris Cardona has said that he contacted the police on Thursday and offered his willingness to collaborate with authorities in their investigation into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

On Tuesday, the Daphne Project – a consortium of journalists investigating the journalist’s assassination and work – published a number of articles in which two witnesses claimed to have seen Cardona at the Ferdinand’s Bar in Siggiewi together with one of the men about to stand trial for the her murder.

A second witness claimed that Cardona had even met with the suspects before the murder. The Daphne Project has also claimed that the suspects had been tipped off before they were arrested in a police raid last December.

A group of civil society activists filed a report at the Valletta police station on Thursday where they requested an investigation into the allegations made in Cardona’s regard.

“This morning, of his own volition, the Minister released a statement to Inspector Keith Arnaud, the chief prosecutor in the criminal proceedings against the three suspects involved in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia,” read a statement by the minister. 

It added that the minister had “clarified” the following points with the police:

1. With reference to the published footage, the Minister categorically denies that he was    present at the bar on Sunday 3 December 2017, a day before the arrest of the individuals accused with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.  
2. The Minister denies ever having a meeting with the accused, and more so, having planned to meet with the accused. 
3. The Minister clarified that he does visit the bar in question on Saturdays or Sundays when football matches are played and broadcast on TV and has been doing so for several years, even before becoming a minister.  
4. The Minister reaffirmed his comments made yesterday to newspaper Times of Malta where he denied being ever at the bar with the suspects.
5. The Minister also stressed that he does not exclude the possibility that there might have been any of the suspects at the bar at the same time, in the same way that he does not exclude that there were several others including politicians from the Nationalist Party.

The minister also said it was “worth noting” that it had been reported that one of the alleged witnesses had been introduced to the media by a senior official of the Nationalist Opposition.

Cardona questions video editing

Writing on Facebook on Friday afternoon, the minister accused the Times of Malta of manipulating footage, insisting that this was done to "lead to completely differing and false conclusions".

The first video uploaded by the newspaper on Friday morning was roughly four minutes long and it was subsequently replaced by a shorter edited version.