Court orders Serbian anti-corruption politician to testify in Allied Newspapers graft case, at Keith Schembri's request

Former Serbian politician and 2015 OSCE anti-corruption award winner Miroslava Milenovich has been ordered to testify in a constitutional case aimed at annulling the magisterial inquiry into money laundering at Allied Newspapers.

In the case, which has been ongoing before madame justice Anna Felice since April 2022, lawyers for Keith Schembri, Alfio Schembri, Malcolm Scerri and Robert Zammit are demanding the judge declare magistrate Josette Demicoli’s inquiry into possible money laundering at Allied Newspapers “defective and null.”

The men, who are all subjects of ongoing criminal proceedings relating to money laundering and graft in a private deal in which Schembri’s company sold a printing press to Allied Newspapers for an artificially inflated price, filed an urgent constitutional application before the First Hall of the Civil Court in March last year.

They are claiming to have suffered a breach of their right to a fair trial under the European Convention on Human Rights due to what they described as “unjustified delays” in concluding the magisterial inquiry and “possible procedural shortcomings.”

The inquiry had been ongoing for nearly four years, but the inquiring magistrate had submitted the inquiry, together with its conclusions, to the AG around the time that the urgent application had been filed.

In the urgent application, lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo pointed out that the Criminal Code obliges the inquiring magistrate to inform the Attorney General of the reasons for delays when the inquiry takes longer than 60 days to conclude. “It is not known whether the inquiring magistrate has done so and much less the reasons given to justify the delays,” they said.

The lawyers argued that case law from the European Court of Human Rights had established that the right to justice within a reasonable time also applies to pre-trial stages as well as the investigation stage.

Insisting that the delay could not be justified, the lawyers said that their only source of information about the progress of this inquiry was “the Shift News portal.”

In September 2020 that portal had published a story announcing that the inquiry was in its final stages and that the magistrate was expected to communicate her conclusions to the AG for possible action.

The plaintiffs had filed an application before the inquiring magistrate requesting a police investigation into whether information from the inquiry had been leaked and if so, to take criminal action against the person responsible for the leak.  On 2 March 2021, both the Shift and the Times had reported that the inquiry in question had been completed and delivered to the Attorney General.

It was clear, said the lawyers, that the delay in concluding the inquiry had also caused speculation in the press, which they argued, had led to the leaks, adding that the leaks “could potentially be taken as a criminal offence in their own right.”

Expert challenged

Schembri’s lawyers are also claiming a second breach of fair trial rights over the appointment of Mirosolva Milenovic as an expert in the inquiry. Besides arguing that Milenovic’s conclusions were “entirely incorrect and in some instances, deplorable” the lawyers also submitted that she was not a competent person to give an opinion on the case.

The reason given by the lawyers was that Milenovic had been a candidate for a political party in Serbia called “Enough is Enough” which espouses “souverainist and eurosceptic” political views which were “similar if not identical” to the person who had filed the application requesting this inquiry - former opposition leader Simon Busuttil. 

They argued that this meant that she should never have been appointed as an expert in a magisterial inquiry “which undoubtedly has a political character.”

This fact put the impartiality of the process in doubt, said the lawyers, because in the inquiry report, the magistrate herself had said that she had relied a great deal on Milenovic’s opinions. 

Important witnesses not heard

Accusing the inquiring magistrate as having been “selective” in what witnesses to hear, the lawyers further alleged that although Malcolm Scerri, Robert Zammit and Adrian Hilman had not been asked to testify, the inquiry had recommended that they face criminal charges.

One of the subjects of the inquiry, Keith Schembri, had not testified either, because an expert report had not been completed and Schembri insisted on testifying only after being given disclosure of the report, which never happened, said the lawyers.

Neither had the police interviewed “one of the subjects of the investigation” - thought to be a reference to Adrian Hilman -as that person resided abroad, reads the application.

Evidence of the replies given by the directors of Progress Press to questions about alleged fraud against the State had not been provided to the defence, “probably because nobody spoke to them, at least about these charges,” it was claimed.

The lawyers expressed scepticism about the recommendation that criminal charges be issued against the directors of the Times, and said that the absence of information put the defendants at a disadvantage.

Legal impossibility to challenge Inquiry conclusions “breaches human rights”

The lawyers also argued that although the Criminal Court was empowered to revise a magistrate’s decision to start an inquiry; this right did not extend to the conclusions reached by an inquiring magistrate. The law only grants a limited discretion to the Attorney General, who may vary the actions recommended by such an inquiry.