Muscat rubbishes claims he asked Yorgen Fenech about Melvin Theuma recordings

Joseph Muscat has rubbished claims reportedly made by Yorgen Fenech that he had asked the suspected Daphne Caruana Galizia murder mastermind whether his chief of staff Keith Schembri’s name cropped up in recordings made by Melvin Theuma.

The former prime minister, who exited in December 2019 under a cloud when Fenech was arrested and Schembri resigned, denied he had warned Fenech that the police would be at some point raiding Theuma’s property.

Muscat said in a long Facebook post that he never had any logistical information about such raids.

Muscat was reacting to a report in The Sunday Times of Malta that Fenech had told police investigators in November that Muscat had asked him if his chief of staff had featured in recordings secretly taped by Theuma, the self-confessed middleman in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder.

The newspaper said Fenech had claimed Muscat discussed Theuma with him on two occasions, once at a party at Girgenti, and another time during a meeting at Castille with Muscat and Schembri.

In a Facebook post this morning, Muscat said “all this is absolutely not true”.

“In the months when a meeting supposedly took place in the Office of the Prime Minister, it results that there is no record – as is always kept for meetings – that I met with the accused,” Muscat said.

Moreover, Muscat underlined that the police raids on Theuma had in fact been planned months after the alleged meetings with Fenech took place, and, this notwithstanding, he still didn’t have any information about the raids.

The authorities, he said, could confirm this.

“This is not the first time that I am facing lies, and even supposed ‘evidence’, that after months of an inquiry it resulted that someone had taken the effort to fabricate,” Muscat added, in an apparent reference to the results of the Egrant inquiry.