Magistrate turns down Jason Azzopardi’s request for inquiry into Silvio Schembri

A magistrate has turned down Jason Azzopardi’s request for an inquiry into Economy Minister Silvio Schembri over unexplained wealth.

Magistrate Antoine Agius Bonnici said the complaint filed by Azzopardi, which primarily consisted of a series of news articles from The Shift News, Newsbook and Times of Malta concerning the Lands Authority, did not meet the necessary requirements at law to warrant a magisterial inquiry.

However, in his ruling, Agius Bonnici also refuted Schembri’s request to declare Azzopardi’s complaint vexatious and frivolous. The magistrate also turned down the minister’s request to have Azzopardi investigated for allegedly lying under oath.

In his reply to Azzopardi’s inquiry request, Schembri had refuted any wrongdoing. He also produced in his defence a document signed by Ivan Camilleri, as a journalist for The Shift News, in which the latter declared that he had stopped writing about the minister because he had been satisfied by the explanations given to him. The implication is that the unsigned articles that appeared in The Shift were written by him.

Nonetheless, the magistrate decreed that Camilleri’s declaration, which was not produced under oath, had little relevance since the court was not deliberating on the substance of the allegations but the nature of the request and whether this satisfied the legal requirements.

The magistrate said the list of news reports presented by Azzopardi did not clearly stipulate what crimes were supposedly committed, by whom and which of them carried a potential prison term of over three years. The magistrate said this did not satisfy the requisites laid down at law, which demanded that the alleged wrongdoing be explained in detail, including how this was connected to the person being indicated as a suspect.

For these reasons the magistrate turned down the request to order the initiation of a magisterial inquiry.

Meanwhile, in a Facebook post, Azzopardi said he will be appealing the ruling on the basis that Schembri had been afforded an audience to which he had not been present or informed about.

The law as it stands today, allows either party to appeal the duty magistrate’s ruling.

Azzopardi had filed this request on 30 December. During the same period he requested four other magisterial inquiries implicating also Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri and other public officials. One of the requests involving a top official at the Lands Authority was refused outright, while the others concerning the Gozo Minister and projects carried out in Gozo were deemed to have been filed in the wrong court - Azzopardi should have filed his requests in Gozo, where the suspected wrongdoing took place.

The flurry of magisterial inquiry requests over the Christmas holidays infuriated the Prime Minister, who ordered his Justice Minister to work on changes to the law allowing private citizens to make such requests.

The proposed changes, which have been tabled in parliament, will force ordinary citizens to first file a police report and will introduce new hurdles, making it harder for such requests to be made.