The government wants to ‘kill’ ongoing magisterial inquiries on cases that shocked the country in the past few years, and not just interfere in the way future inquiries are held, the shadow minister for justice, Karol Aquilina, said on Wednesday.

Speaking in Parliament, he observed that a Bill published last week would not only restrict the people’s right to ask a magistrate to conduct an inquiry, but it also ordered magistrates to stop work within six months on inquiries which have been in progress for more than two years.

Among them were the inquiries into the murders of Raymond Caruana, Karin Grech and Daphne Caruana Galizia and the inquiries into the alleged corruption of the Electrogas power station, the Montenegro windfarms project (by Maltese interests) and the Panama Papers.

“This is an obscenity. Robert Abela and (justice minister) Jonathan Attard want inquiries which have been open for more than two years to be killed off, independently of whether they can be concluded or not.

“You should be ashamed, you do not want us to find the truth in some of the most serious cases the country has seen,” Aquilina said.

Those inquiries, he said, would effectively be stolen from the hands of the magistrates and would likely end up in some drawer, with no further action taken.

In his address, Aquilina said this Bill was a disgraceful act against the people. The people had, for many years, enjoyed the right to call on a magistrate to conduct an inquiry. They did not even need to present evidence, but they needed to indicate the case and the people involved and show that the material of the case, such as evidence, still existed. The magistrate then collected and presented evidence up to the degree of prima facie and made recommendations.

But now the government was saying that the people first had to go to the police. If the police did not act, they could go to a magistrate after six months. But they needed to present evidence up to the degree of probability, which was even higher than what an inquiring magistrate was expected to establish, and something which ordinary people could not do. Effectively, this meant the right for private requests for magisterial inquiries was being denied.

This, Aquilina pointed out, was a government which had already been found guilty by three judges (in the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry) of having created a climate of impunity which led to the journalist’s murder. Instead of letting the institutions work so that they could investigate what Caruana Galizia had reported about, the government had created a system which protected the corrupt and those who abused.

And it was continuing to behave in the same way.

Even now, the police knew that certain people were in serious danger, but they were not protecting them.

“You destroyed the institutions, you made them puppets to serve you and not the people. This is your worst disservice to the people of Malta,” Aquilina said. 

An important instrument being denied to the people

Private people’s requests for magisterial inquiries were an important tool used in various cases over the years. One of the most recently well-known was that by a group of people who acted over alleged misappropriation of their funds by a notary. They had felt they needed to go to a magistrate after the police did not act.

There had even been a case where a Polish person resident in Malta alleged sexual abuse by the police commissioner himself. But now the government wanted the people to go to the police before magisterial inquiries could be sought.

Did anyone expect the police to investigate themselves?

And what if the police decided not to hand over a case to a magistrate after six months on the pretext of needing to ‘investigate further’?

Aquilina noted that private requests for magisterial inquiries only gathered pace after 2013 when the police abdicated their duties in serious cases of corruption or abuse, such as 17 Black and the Panama Papers. Had those cases not been taken up by magistrates, nothing would have happened.   

Government interference in magisterial inquiries

But now, not only was the government taking away that right from the people, but shamefully, it would also interfere in the way all magisterial inquiries were conducted.

Authorities controlled by the government would have access to inquiries which had to date been held in secret, and the government would control the way court experts were appointed, instead of leaving it up to magistrates.

Among other things, experts had to be physical persons, not companies. This would effectively kill off money laundering inquiries, which needed detailed investigations by groups of people. And the money launderers would get away scot-free.

Concluding Aquilina said this Bill was the creation of secrecy by those who had something to hide. This was legislation for which the government had no electoral mandate.  It was well known that some government MPs disagreed with it and it was their duty to speak up, and not do what they had done when they voted against the Sofia inquiry, only to have long faces afterwards.