Updated 2.10pm, adds information on lavatory photos investigation

Capo Mulini, a Marsaxlokk fish restaurant that was in the headlines over the past few months, has closed down.

Its closing was announced by the management in a Facebook post.

"We would like to announce that the restaurant is closed and will no longer be operated by Capo Mulini Management. Thank you to our customers for always believing in us! It has been our pleasure hosting you all," the post read.

In April last year Capo Mulini was one of two fish restaurants linked in court to alleged money laundering involving oil smuggling and its director, Albert Buttigieg was taken to court. He pleaded not guilty.

Investigators unravelled the workings of a suspect organised crime group, allegedly involved in a €30 million fuel smuggling racket. They traced restaurant-owning companies owned by Darren Debono, the suspected fuel smuggling mastermind. Debono was arrested in December and later released on bail.

In May last year the restaurant strongly denied that recording equipment was ever installed or found in its lavatories and used for illegal activities. Its denial followed a court hearing during which an IT expert Martin Bajada flagged that some 14,000 photos had been retrieved from a camera placed "covertly" in a ladies' toilet.

No charges were ever issued against the restaurant and Mr Buttigieg. 

Sources close to the case confirmed that the police had investigated the stash of photographs, as they had been ordered to do by the court, and found that there was no criminal case to answer for.

The sources said the images were stills from a 10-second clip of a woman in some bathroom. The tiles which can be seen in the footage and the images did not even correspond to the restaurant lavatory and neither to any lavatory connected to Buttigieg.

Moreover, the woman in question was not identifiable.

When questioned about the matter, Buttigieg denied any knowledge of the indecent material which was found in the deleted items folder of his computer.

He told the police he had borrowed a pen drive from someone to save some documents and had deleted all its contents prior to using it.