Updated | Caruana Galizia requests minister’s geolocation, call data

Blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia has filed an urgent court application, requesting the courts to order mobile phone operators to exhibit their records and establish Chris Cardona’s whereabouts on the day he allegedly visited a German brothel.

It was in late January that Caruana Galizia claimed sources had spotted the minister at Acapulco – allegations which Cardona has vehemently denied and for which he has filed libel proceedings. Caruana Galizia's lawyers this morning appeared before the magistrate in the continuation of the libel case.

“This outright lie is another attempt on Caruana Galizia’s part to discredit and sully an individual’s reputation,” Cardona had said, accusing her of peddling fake news.

Caruana Galizia is seeking to prove Cardona’s whereabouts on 30 January. The application comes at a time when the country is gripped by separate claims made by Caruana Galizia that the Prime Minister’s wife is directly involved in an offshore company, whose existence was revealed in the Panama Papers, 

The application, filed by lawyers Joe Zammit Maempel and Antonio Ghio in the acts of the libel sitting, asked magistrate Francesco Depasquale to order local phone operators, Go, Vodafone and Melita to exhibit their copy of the Minister's TAP file, which is a form of remote record of location data from a mobile phone.

The request states that all personal data belonging to third parties should be made anonymous before the TAP file is released.

Caruana Galizia's court request asks that, every applicable TAP file in the operators' possession, to be deposited in court in a sealed envelope until they testify and, before doing so, to analyse the data relating to 30 January between 5pm and 12.30am and 31 January between 2pm and 7pm, "including amongst other things, telephone numbers contacted by the applicant, or which he received calls or SMS from, as well as to take all the necessary steps to preserve the extracts from the TAP files."

The application argues that the data should be presented as soon as possible as TAP files are only stored for six months.