Degiorgios reached out to Chris Cardona with a bail request, Melvin Theuma tells court

George and Alfred Degiorgio had reached out to former economy minister Chris Cardona with a bail request but Cardona had ignored the message, middleman Melvin Theuma said in court on Thursday.

Testifying during the compilation of evidence against murder suspect Yorgen Fenech, Theuma said that Mario Degiorgio, brother to the two accused of executing Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, had told him that Cardona had ignored his brothers’ request for bail.

“If anyone could help them, Cardona knew all of the judges. Mario had told me that Cardona had ignored them over the bail though. They had sent him a message to him over the bail but he ignored them,” Theuma said during his testimony.

The court continued to hear Theuma’s secret recordings of conversations he had had with Fenech—whilst most of the audio was muffled and incomprehensible, the names of former chief of staff Keith Schembri and former economy minister Chris Cardona could be clearly heard amongst blasphemy.

“Cardona is more familiar [with the courts] than ix-Xih (former prime minister Joseph Muscat). The other one wasn’t in court,” Theuma said, replying to chief investigator Keith Arnaud’s questions about why Cardona might have been the Degiorgios’ preferred contact.

When Theuma was pressed on this issue by parte civile lawyer Jason Azzopardi, Theuma was evasive.

“Can you explain to me how people in prison accused of murder decided to speak to a minister to help them with bail?” Azzopardi asked.

Theuma said that Cardona had been mentioned in news reports and was familiar with the law courts. “I never asked,” Theuma finally said.

The middleman also made reference to “four others” that might have been involved in the murder besides himself and Fenech.

When asked about who these four might be, Theuma said he couldn’t reply and that it was an arbitrary number that he had come up with.

“I just assumed that there were others,” he said.

The court suspended Theuma’s testimony and made a note that the next recordings to be heard in the next sitting would mention other names that are subject to an investigation.

The court has ordered the testimony of Schembri alongside Johann Cremona and Kenneth Camilleri, who formed part of Muscat’s former security detail.

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