Keith Schembri claims PN MPs breached his right to fair hearing during PAC

Keith Schembri’s lawyers have filed Constitutional proceedings, claiming PN MPs had breached his right to a fair hearing during Tuesday’s session of the Public Accounts Committee.

Schembri, once Chief of Staff to former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, had been testifying before the Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday but his testimony had been cut short when his lawyers had threatened to file a Constitutional case in the wake of the demand for an investigation into perjury allegations that had been filed by the committee’s PN members following last week’s grilling.

PN PAC committee members, MPs Darren Carabott, David Agius and Graham Bencini, had prior to the sitting, formally requested a police investigation into what they said was false testimony by Schembri, as well as former finance minister Edward Scicluna and former deputy Police Commissioner Silvio Valletta.

The request had been made after the Opposition’s PAC members pointed to contradictions in the sworn testimonies about the Electrogas contract which had been made by the three witnesses to the committee and, before that, to the public inquiry into the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

In his testimony before the PAC last week, Schembri had refuted Edward Scicluna’s claim that the plans for an LNG power station had been taken by a clique of insiders he had described as a “kitchen cabinet”, saying that Scicluna would have been involved in all major decisions in his role as Finance Minister.

Schembri told the PAC that Scicluna’s claim not to have been involved in the planning or decisions concerning the costings of the LNG plant, made no sense. He was involved, Schembri  had said, “naturally enough and perforce, together with the permanent secretary Alfred Camilleri. It was no kitchen Cabinet… it was the Cabinet.”

In the Constitutional application filed this morning by lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo, Schembri is arguing that his right to a fair hearing had been breached when Carabott, who had been presiding the PAC meeting, had not allowed Schembri to request a ruling from the Speaker that would have suspended his testimony until the conclusion of the criminal investigation that Carabott, Agius and Bencini had requested.

Neither had the three PN MPs recused themselves from the decision on Schembri's request, “in view of their manifest conflict of interest,” said the lawyers, adding that this breached the principle of not judging a case when they had an interest in its outcome. “Not only did they not recuse themselves…but they blocked, in every possible way, every opportunity for a remedy requested by the applicant.”

In so doing, Schembri’s lawyers said, the MPs had abandoned their positions as members of an impartial committee in favour of making themselves complainants against a person who was testifying before them, by filing a premature criminal complaint before the testimony had even finished.

The particular circumstances of the incident had given rise to a “probably unprecedented” situation whereby a witness had been ordered to testify before the PAC in the Parliament building, administered the oath by the President of the PAC, replied to nearly four hours of questions put to him by three members of the same PAC, who had requested - in their own name - a police investigation into the witness, before he had finished testifying and above all, a witness who had been asking for the protection of the Speaker of the House, by asking the PAC President to refer his request for a suspension of testimony until the police investigations were complete.

“The respondents, in their privileged position of power, abused this position by themselves starting a criminal investigation into a witness who was still testifying before them and this without consulting with the rest of the Permanent Committee or putting this to a vote.”

Schembri’s lawyers stressed that he had not invoked his right to silence to avoid self-incrimination, but had instead, answered four hours of questions.

“Through their behaviour and with the political stunt they carried out, the defendants reduced an important institution to ridicule…and clearly showed that their interest was not so much the public spending they were supposedly scrutinising, but more that of scoring metaphorical political points.”

The application requests the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction to declare that Carabott, Agius and Bencini had breached his right to a fair hearing, as well as to declare that Parliament’s Standing Orders did not preclude a witness before a parliamentary committee from seeking the protection of the Speaker.

It also requests the defendants: Darren Carabott, David Agius, Graham Bencini, as well as the State Advocate and Speaker of the House, to take the necessary measures to suspend Schembri’s testimony until the requested criminal investigation into perjury is concluded.