Perjury charges for senior GRTU officials

The president of the GRTU Malta Chamber of SMEs, Paul Abela, and vice-president Philip Fenech are to be arraigned in court for perjuring themselves in their testimony about the charge of attempted murder against Sandro Chetcuti.

Police began investigating whether Abela and Fenech had committed perjury only after Chetcuti, a former GRTU official who today is president of the Malta Developers Association, challenged the police for their failure to institute perjury charges against Farrugia and other witnesses.

Abela had testified in court that he had witnessed former GRTU director general Vince Farrugia being assaulted by Chetcuti, who had been charged with attempted murder following a brawl with Farrugia which took place in his GRTU office in 2010. Chetcuti had gone to speak to Farrugia after an SMS Chetcuti intended for the then leader of the Opposition, Joseph Muscat, was sent to the GRTU director general in error. The argument developed into a brawl.

But the initial charge of attempted murder was later downgraded by the Attorney General to grievous bodily harm as doubts began to emerge about Farrugia’s account. A number of SMSs sent by Farrugia to witnesses, downloaded from his mobile phone and exhibited during the compilation of evidence, indicated that Farrguia had attempted to suborn witnesses into testifying that Chetcuti wanted to kill him.

Chetcuti was eventually only found guilty of slightly injuring Farrugia.

The SMSs confirmed that Farrugia was attempting to pressure witnesses into giving false testimony and paint a misleading picture of how events had developed. 

Eventually however, one witness, GRTU employee Sylvia Gauci, recanted her false version in court, revealing that the testimony of other key witnesses, such as Paul Abela and Philip Fenech, were untrue.

Passing sentence on Chetcuti in 2013, the court ordered that the Commissioner of Police investigate Farrugia for perjury.

Then, last November, Chetcuti instituted challenge proceedings against the Commissioner of Police for failing to file perjury charges against Farrugia and a number of witnesses.

The magistrate ordered the Commissioner of Police to take the necessary steps to prosecute all those who had lied under oath together with Farrugia, but stopped short of naming the witnesses who should face perjury charges. 

The court was of the opinion that many witnesses supporting the trumped up charges against Chetcuti had been coached to effectively give false testimony, decreeing that “the court is convinced that not only did Farrugia influence witnesses on how and what to testify, but in his own testimony gave a distorted picture of the facts, making the incident look more brutal than it actually was.”

The court made particular reference to one SMS which Farrugia had sent to Paul Abela, reminding him to repeat that Sandro Chetcuti had used the word: “Noqtlok” (I will kill you).

Farrugia also asked Abela to say that Chetcuti made his “kill you” threat as Chetcuti was hitting Farrugia.

It later transpired that Paul Abela was not even present in the room at the time.

Farrugia had sent SMSs to several witnesses, including one to Sylvia Gauci, which read “All you have to do on Wednesday… is to say loud and clear, that if your colleagues were not there he would have killed me. I’m in no doubt he would have stopped only after he battered me. A beast should be locked up in prison. [Bestja trid thalliha Kordin]”.

Gauci herself later admitted to the court that she had been coerced into testifying falsely.

Her admission effectively brought about the collapse of the attempted murder charge against Chetcuti, raising doubts about the credibility of other witnesses, such as Philip Fenech – a close friend of Farrugia – who had told the court that he had heard shouting at the GRTU offices.

Gauci had testified that Philip Fenech was not even in the GRTU offices at the time.

Gauci had even testified that Abela and Fenech were also at the meeting during which employees were instructed on what they should tell the police.

Gauci confirmed an SMS presented in court which shows she was instructed by Vince Farrugia on 19 March, 2010 to tell police that Chetcuti wanted to “kill” Farrugia during the assault.

The SMS said: “Re Wednesday, when you came in you saw him looking vicious and ready to butt my head with his. Your eyes’ message which I read was ‘watch it’ and your eyes showed terror. That’s what I’ll say. And as he hit me you heard him say repeatedly ‘noqtlok, noqtlok’ (I’ll kill you...) That’s the truth. I wake up in the night hearing those words in his hoarse voice laud [sic] in my eyes. We must all hammer this point.” 

Gauci subsequently told the court: “I saw Vince Farrugia on the floor... and Sandro Chetcuti was at the back [of the boardroom]. I didn’t see him hitting Vince” – confirming that she had not witnessed the assault itself.