Repubblika wants lawyer Pawlu Lia to testify in Pilatus police challenge

Rule of Law advocacy NGO Repubblika has announced that it will be summonsing Joseph Muscat’s lawyer Pawlu Lia to testify in a court case it filed today, after a magistrate refused to step aside from hearing the NGO’s bid to force the police to enforce the conclusions of the Pilatus inquiry.

The case is a reaction to the ruling delivered on Monday by Magistrate Nadine Lia, the daughter-in-law of lawyer Lia, who is presiding over the NGO’s challenge proceedings filed after the police’s failure to charge a number of individuals it says were earmarked for prosecution in the Pilatus inquiry.

In the application, signed by lawyer Jason Azzopardi, the NGO requested that lawyer Pawlu Lia be summonsed in order to confirm on oath that he is magistrate Nadine Lia's father-in-law and that he is also a legal advisor to both former prime minister Joseph Muscat, as well as Muscat’s Chief of Staff, Keith Schembri.

This relationship would be relevant, Repubblika said, in view of Muscat and Schembri’s well documented close ties to Pilatus Bank, the now-shuttered private bank; and the fact that all three are important players in the Egrant case.

But in her 29 August decision, Lia dismissed the recusal request, pointing out that both the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police declared in court that they had never provided copies, nor any details of the inquiry report, to Repubblika or its representatives. 

Neither had they been authorised to do so, or publish any part of it, the magistrate had observed. Lia had ruled that, in view of the inquiry’s non-public nature, such that even the magistrate herself was precluded from seeing its contents, conclusions, or even information as to whether it had been definitively concluded or not, she was unable to uphold the NGO’s request.

The magistrate took exception to being asked to abstain from hearing the case on the basis of “some form of hearsay or gratuitous declaration.”

In its application filed this morning, Repubblika emphasised that the NGO’s president, Robert Aquilina, who is a Notary Public, had taken an oath on the rejected application.

In view of the magistrate’s hearsay claim, today Aquilina exhibited, under oath, a verbatim transcription of extracts from the Egrant inquiry’s final report, as proof that it had ended 18 months ago and had concluded that several Maltese and foreign individuals had to be charged with money laundering and criminal conspiracy. 

Repubblika stressed that the 29 August decree meant that the magistrate saw nothing wrong in presiding a case in which she would decide on whether to order the police to institute criminal proceedings against a prominent and recent former client of her father in law, who is also a Politically Exposed Person (PEP), as well as close friends of this former client.

It also meant that the magistrate saw nothing wrong in deciding whether to order that charges be pressed against Pilatus Bank officials, “who know the identity of Egrant’s ultimate beneficial owner (UBO), when her father in law had himself requested a magisterial inquiry into the Egrant claims and had dictated its terms of reference," said Repubblika.

The NGO added that were Magistrate Lia to continue hearing the case, she would also be required to take judicial notice of the conclusions of a 2019 magisterial inquiry which had ordered the re-examination of the Egrant Inquiry conclusions, alleging that lawyer Pawlu Lia had “done everything in his power to protect the company’s potential UBO.”

The Pilatus Bank inquiry, which was separate from the Egrant probe published or 2017, noted that certain specific allegations about Egrant could not readily be explained. An expert report which formed part of an inquiry into Pilatus Bank, said that further steps could be taken with the US authorities to verify if a $1.017 million transfer to government officials had taken place.

“Instead of the presiding magistrate requesting the Commissioner of Police to confirm whether this statement was true or not, she turned her guns on Repubblika, which is fortunate enough to have been told about that which the Commissioner of Police wanted to keep under wraps and refuse to comply with the orders of the inquiring magistrate.”

Repubblika said it reserved its right to file constitutional proceedings in both Malta and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg should the magistrate continue to refuse its recusal request.