Konrad Mizzi lawyer mooted MSS deal for Hofstra over Theuma recordings

The lawyer to former Labour minister Konrad Mizzi personally offered to negotiate some form of immunity with the Malta Security Services for Dutch inmate Julian Hofstra.

Hofstra, 21, says he has recordings he made of Melvin Theuma, the middleman turned State witness in the Caruana Galizia assassination, whom he befriended at the white taxi stand he ran at the Portomaso Hilton sometime before 2019.

MaltaToday now understands that Mizzi’s lawyer Jean Paul Sammut would have offered to negotiate with the Malta Security Service so that Hofstra can avoid any prosecution in Malta, if he were to become his lawyer.

According to conversations between the two, Hofstra contacted Sammut in December 2020 seeking legal help. The Dutch inmate later decided to appoint Charles Mercieca as his representative. Media attention then latched on to the existence of the Theuma recordings, in which the middleman is heard speaking of his fear of retribution from Keith Schembri, the former chief of staff to former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

Schembri was a friend of the alleged murder mastermind and Electrogas shareholder, as well as being liked to his offshore company 17 Black.

Hofstra rekindled contact Sammut on 24 January, where Sammut coaxed the Dutch national to “play it safe” and cooperate with the competent authorities, namely MSS and police.

Here is what Sammut said in the WhatsApp conversations: “If you decide to cooperate with authorities, send a letter whereby you appoint me as your sole legal representative in Malta to negotiate with authorities on your behalf. But with the letter I want the username and password so that when I officially write to them I will have access in hand... I don’t want to look like an idiot again – like what happened in December, we started meeting with MSS and then you went to give everything to other people! You have to understand my position if you truly want me to help you.”

MaltaToday has not established to what degree Hofstra could have known Konrad Mizzi, except for a photograph in which Hofstra is seen among Air Malta top brass and the former tourism minister.

Sammut told MaltaToday in a request for comment that Hofstra had assured him that “there was no link between his alleged evidence and Konrad Mizzi, and that is why I accepted to assist him.”

Sammut also says Hofstra told him he had seen Mizzi at the airport at a press conference, where the Dutchman had a picture taken with him. “If Hofstra at some point informed me that he had any information on my client Dr Mizzi, I would have ceased all communication with Hofstra,” Sammut told this newspaper.

In the conversations, Hofstra raised concerns as to whether he could face some form of prosecution, to which Sammut assured him that he could negotiate with the government, as long as he stopped spreading information around.

But Sammut demanded that he be made his sole legal representative in Malta, to negotiate with authorities on his behalf, as well as demanding the log-in credentials that would grant him access to the device that holds recordings of Melvin Theuma.

In comments to MaltaToday, Sammut steered clear of addressing this part of the conversation. “I am not (Hofstra’s) lawyer therefore I cannot answer. This is privileged and I cannot comment,” he said of his alleged conversations with the police or MSS.

The Malta police have denied having attempted to broker some form of immunity deal with Hoftsra. But the Financial Crimes Investigation Department superintendent James Grech issued a European investigation order (EIO) to the Dutch police, in a bid to confirm the veracity of the alleged recordings of Melvin Theuma.

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.

The recordings, taken by Hofstra in late 2018 to early 2019, are what make him a person of interest in the case. Allegedly, the sound-clips would show Theuma being scared of possible retribution from Keith Schembri.

The recordings are deemed important for the Fenech defence team, if they could undermine Theuma’s presidential pardon, whose evidence is crucial in the prosecution’s case against the business magnate. Theuma has testified that it was Yorgen Fenech who masterminded the Caruana Galizia murder.

The bizarre twists in this story go further: Hofstra claims he befriended Silvio Zammit, the restaurateur implicated in the Dalligate bribery scandal of 2012; Zammit has denied making use of Hofstra’s services at any point.

Zammit’s lawyer is Edward Gatt, who is also the chief lawyer to Keith Schembri, who set up the secret Panama offshore firms back in 2013 together with Konrad Mizzi.