PAC must wait for Constitutional decision before resuming Schembri grilling

The Speaker of the House has ruled that the parliamentary public accounts committee will have to wait for a decision from the Constitutional Court as to whether Keith Schembri is right to request a suspension of his hearing.

Anglu Farrugia ruled on Tuesday evening that the PAC had to avoid the possibility of being found in breach of Schembri’s fair hearing rights.

He cited Erskine May in saying that a select committee hearing was subordinate to a court in matters of law.

Schembri filed the Constitutional case after the PAC refused to allow him to suspend his testimony, when MPs from the PAC requested a criminal investigation into alleged perjury emanating from his testimony, and from others.

The former chief of staff to Joseph Muscat claimed the PN MPs breached his right to a fair hearing, after they requested an investigation into perjury allegations. The investigation was requested into what the PN MPs claimed had been false testimony by Schembri, as well as former finance minister Edward Scicluna and former deputy Police Commissioner Silvio Valletta.

In their constitutional application, Schembri’s lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo, argud their client’s right to a fair hearing was breached when Carabott, as PAC chairman, denied him a ruling from the Speaker to suspend the testimony pending the criminal investigation the MPs had requested.

Carabott said such a request could only be made by MPs, none of whom consented to Schembri’s request. Schembri then refused to answer any further questions, citing the constitutional challenge he was to file, leading Carabott to request a Speaker’s ruling to force Schembri to keep testifying.

In so doing, Schembri’s lawyers said, the MPs had abandoned their positions as members of an impartial committee in favour of making themselves complainants against a person who was testifying before them, by filing a premature criminal complaint before the testimony had even finished.

The particular circumstances of the incident had given rise to a “probably unprecedented” situation whereby a witness had been ordered to testify before the PAC in the Parliament building, administered the oath by the President of the PAC, replied to nearly four hours of questions put to him by three members of the same PAC, who had requested – in their own name - a police investigation into the witness, before he had finished testifying and above all, a witness who had been asking for the protection of the Speaker of the House, by asking the PAC President to refer his request for a suspension of testimony until the police investigations were complete.

“The respondents, in their privileged position of power, abused this position by themselves starting a criminal investigation into a witness who was still testifying before them and this without consulting with the rest of the Permanent Committee or putting this to a vote,” the lawyers said.

Schembri’s lawyers stressed that he had not invoked his right to silence to avoid self-incrimination, but had instead, answered four hours of questions. “Through their behaviour and with the political stunt they carried out, the defendants reduced an important institution to ridicule…and clearly showed that their interest was not so much the public spending they were supposedly scrutinising, but more that of scoring metaphorical political points.”

In his testimony before the PAC , Schembri had refuted Edward Scicluna’s claim that the plans for an LNG power station had been taken by a clique of insiders he had described as a “kitchen cabinet”, saying that Scicluna would have been involved in all major decisions in his role as Finance Minister.

Schembri told the PAC that Scicluna’s claim not to have been involved in the planning or decisions concerning the costings of the LNG plant, made no sense. He was involved, Schembri  had said, “naturally enough and perforce, together with the permanent secretary Alfred Camilleri. It was no kitchen Cabinet… it was the Cabinet.”