Malta investigators want Dutch police to quiz inmate over Melvin Theuma tapes

A Dutch inmate who claims he has recordings of the middleman in the Caruana Galizia assassination, has been issued with a European Investigation Order by the police in Malta. 

The Financial Crimes Investigation Department superintendent James Grech issued the EIO to the Dutch police, in a bid to confirm the veracity of the alleged recordings of Melvin Theuma, who turned State’s evidence in 2019 to testify against Tumas magnate Yorgen Fenech, the alleged mastermind. 

Police investigators are still unsure about the veracity of the recordings, although the Fenech defence team – Gianluca Caruana Curran and Charles Mercieca – travelled to Amsterdam in January where they met Hofstra. 

Sources close to the Dutch inmate who spoke to MaltaToday claim Hofstra is being “pressured” to hand over the recordings. 

The sources, who are in contact with Hofstra, claim the Dutch inmate is annoyed at press reports connecting him to a drugs investigation, which has only added more incongruous pieces to the Hofstra puzzle. “He just wants this to quiet down,” the source said. 

But Hofstra’s allegation of phone recordings of Melvin Theuma, whom he befriended at the white taxi stand at Fenech’s Portomaso Hilton, in which the middleman allegedly speaks of his fear of Keith Schembri, the former prime minister’s chief of staff, has unleashed a furious storm of speculation. These included allegations that he could have aided Theuma in sending phishing emails to Yorgen Fenech; as well as another bizarre twist in which he befriended Silvio Zammit, who stands charged with bribery in the Dalligate affair, whom he could have helped in tampering some emails related to the EU tobacco scandal. 

He even managed to get a photo snapped together with former tourism minister Konrad Mizzi and Air Malta’s top brass at a promotional Malta-Leipzig route inauguration in November 2018. He is said to have travelled with Mizzi and Air Malta owing to his fluency in English and Dutch.