Muscat must take ‘immediate action’ against ministers following court decision, says Delia

The Prime Minister must take “immediate action” against three of his government ministers following a court decision about whether they will need to testify as to how they quoted from the confidential Egrant report, Adrian Delia said.

Delia said that, in its decision on the matter today, the Constitutional Court had “declared that [the ministers] are suspected of breaking the law.”

The Nationalist leader was reacting on Twitter to a Constitutional Court decision which upheld an application filed by Economy Minister Chris Cardona, Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi and Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, in which they requested the overturning of a decree ordering them to be summoned to testify over their citing of details pertaining to the as yet unpublished Egrant inquiry which were not part of the extract published last year.

In its judgment, the court observed that the request to avoid testifying was intended to safeguard the confidentiality of the acts of the inquiry and to protect their interests as potential defendants, being “suspected persons” in the inquiry.

The court ordered the three to present only that part of their reply from June 2019 in the acts of the Vitals inquiry where the extracts from the Egrant inquiry were cited.

In his tweet, however, Delia said that the Constitutional Court had “declared that the three minister are suspected of breaking criminal law and only for this reason can they not be forced to give testimony.”

“The Opposition leader now turns to the Prime minister and challeges him to take action against the three minister who were declared by the country’s highest court of being criminal suspects,” the PN also said in a statement.

Labour party reacts

In a statement on Tuesday night, the Labour party said that because the three ministers in question responded to allegations made, as, "they had a right to," Delia “invented that the court declared something against them.”

The party said that it was Delia who, “through desperate legal steps being taken is trying to throw legal suspicion on whoever comes before him.”

“Every time he is heading into a wall and loses the legal battles he goes in for. After every loss, he invents a new one.”