A magistrate has ordered a criminal case against two lawyers charged with attempting to bribe a Times of Malta journalist last November to continue.
Lawyers Charles Mercieca and Gianluca Caruana Curran are facing criminal proceedings over the attempted bribery of Times of Malta journalist Ivan Martin. The pair, who are representing murder suspect Yorgen Fenech, are denying the charges.
Magistrate Natasha Galea Sciberras decreed on Wednesday that there was enough evidence for the case against the lawyers to proceed and for them to be placed under a bill of indictment.
Quoting a never-ending list of case law, the court noted that in the case of Caruana Curran, the defence had not contested prima facie and that there was “a case to answer” in his regard.
With regards Mercieca, the defence had argued that there was “absolutely no evidence” but the magistrate disagreed with this argument, saying that there had been a number of meetings with Martin, including one in his office.
Moreover, the replies sent to various media houses after the allegations were made public, spoke in the plural and did not solely refer to Caruana Curran. These led the court to decide that there was also a “case to answer” for Mercieca and that the evidence deserved more investigation.
In the case's last sitting, lawyer Stephen Tonna Lowell, defence counsel to lawyer Mercieca, said the prosecution had not brought any evidence to sustain the charge against him. He insisted that there was “absolutely no evidence” linking Mercieca to the attempted bribery.
Magistrate Galea Sciberras also decreed about the defence team’s request not to allow Martin’s statement to the police to be admitted as evidence in the case.
The prosecution had requested that Martin’s audiovisual statement to the police be filed as evidence in the spirit of the equality of arms.
But Tonna Lowell had objected to this, insisting that the law precludes a person’s statement to the police from being presented as evidence and inserted in the acts of the case. He said witnesses had to testify physically in court and it is this testimony that counts. The court upheld this argument and ordered that the statement is not inserted into the acts of the proceedings.
In a previous court sitting, Martin recounted how he had first established contact with Mercieca in May 2020 to get his reaction to a story about him leaving the Attorney General’s office to join Fenech’s defence team.
Martin said he met Mercieca at his Valletta office on October 30 during which meeting he was told the lawyers wanted to undermine the credibility of the state witness in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case.
During this meeting, Martin said Mercieca provided him with some leads and other bits of information, some of which he was interested in pursuing.
Martin said he set about verifying the information given by Mercieca. The journalist said he managed to confirm some details but was still shaky on others so he sent Mercieca an early draft of the story, informing him he had some questions as he was still unclear about some facts.
Two days later, he received a WhatsApp message from Mercieca, asking if he was free to meet up.
The meeting took place and Caruana Curran was present for this second meeting. The journalist recalled how at the end of the meeting, while still chatting with Mercieca, he saw Caruana Curran reaching for what he initially thought were some papers or small post-it notes.
The journalist said that when he realised that Caruana Curran had handed him between two to four €500 notes, he instantly handed them back to the lawyer and informed his superiors about the matter.
The case continues on April 7.
Superintendent James Grech and Inspector Anthony Scerri are prosecuting while lawyer Giannella de Marco is also defending the two lawyers.