Updated 3.45pm
Former minister Carmelo Abela has won a libel suit against Jason Azzopardi over claims of involvement in a bank heist, with the court awarding him €7,000 in damages.
The libel suit was sparked by a 2021 Facebook post in which the former PN MP claimed the minister was linked to a failed armed robbery at HSBC Qormi back in 2010.
While Abela was not named in the post, the court ruled that the ordinary reader could understand who it referred to "with no stretch of the imagination".
In a short reaction on Facebook, Abela shared an excerpt of the judgment, along with the comment: "Justice was served today".
Prime Minister Robert Abela said there was "no place in our society" for "throwing mud with the purpose that something might stick".
When testifying in July of 2021, Azzopardi claimed that days before that botched heist, Alfred Degiorgio - one of the alleged hitmen in the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination - had been handed plans for the robbery and a set of false keys.
He alleged that Vince Muscat, a self-confessed and convicted hitman in the Caruana Galizia murder plot, had accompanied Degiorgio to a Fleur-de-Lys apartment for the meeting wherein the plans, footage and false keys to the bank premises were supplied in the presence of former minister Chris Cardona and Abela.
Back then, Abela was a senior insurance and statistics officer at HSBC’s Security, Health and Safety Department at the Qormi head office that was targeted in the failed coup.
At the time of Azzopardi’s Facebook comments on April 9, 2021, Abela was a Cabinet minister at the Office of the Prime Minister.
On Monday, the court said Azzopardi’s comments were written in “a rhetorical tone”: without expressly stating that Abela was guilty of complicity, the inference from his comments taken in context was “manifest”.
That inference could easily be understood by the ordinary reader with no stretch of the imagination, the court added.
Azzopardi’s “euphemistic and suggestive tone” did not lessen in any way the defamatory nature of his statements.
“Rather... insinuations guised in suggestive terms were sometimes more insidious and upped the intensity of the defamatory sting,” observed the court.
Moreover, the very day after uploading his post, Azzopardi was interviewed by Andrew Azzopardi on his 102.3FM show on RTK. In that interview, Azzopardi named Abela as the minister targeted by the Commissioner of Standards for having abused public funds.
He immediately followed up that statement with a reference to a “Cabinet Minister who was not Minister Herrera” who had been involved “in a very serious crime” and against whom no political action was taken.
But above all, Azzopardi himself did not contest the fact that his comments were directed towards Abela. His line of defence was mainly to seek to justify his view that Abela was indeed involved in the crime.
On the other hand, Abela had shot down those allegations as “blatant lies and total conjectures”.
He highlighted the fact he sought immediate action by contacting the police and suing Azzopardi for libel.
But his reputation was tarnished.
His name was splashed all over the media in connection to the failed hold-up and his political career suffered. Although elected to parliament, he was not given any ministerial portfolio ever since.
Magistrate Montebello observed that Azzopardi’s comments did not simply cast “suspicion” upon Abela but his words were clear. He expressed no reservations about Abela’s alleged complicity.
He made a “specific allegation that [Abela] committed a crime”.
Nor was there any evidence to show that the applicant had been or was being charged as an accomplice, or that he was viewed as a suspect by the police.
Such an allegation doubtlessly undermined the applicant’s integrity, tarnishing his esteem among the public in general. It also gravely affected “in an adverse manner the attitude of other people towards the person”.
'Azzopardi failed to support allegation with sufficient facts'
The court noted that the statement by the Degiorgio brothers, expressly mentioning Abela, was done after the publication of Azzopardi’s Facebook post.
The court turned down all the defendant’s arguments, including his plea that the comments were his honest opinion. He failed to support his allegation with sufficient facts.
His public statements covered by the media, were not sufficient. That was not what the legislator intended by the defence of honest opinion.
The yardstick should not be the defendant’s opinion but that of an honest person. Most of the stories published on news portals prior to Azzopardi’s post were related to comments made by the lawyer himself who began to drop hints about the alleged complicity of a government minister in the HSBC failed heist.
Copies of documents from criminal proceedings against the perpetrators, produced in evidence by the defendant, were not duly authenticated and were not official court documents.
The court did not give them much probatory value.
Based on the evidence, a reader could only share Azzopardi’s opinion if he was “eager for political scandals, resorting to speculation, conjectures and stretching his imagination beyond reason to stir up theories about the guilt of a minister as an accomplice in a notorious crime".
And more so when there existed “no investigation, prosecution and less so no conviction against the applicant,” said the court in a strongly worded 42-page judgment.
The magistrate condemned Azzopardi’s “irresponsible” manner, publishing his views on the subject simply because he felt he was right, rather than resorting to the competent authorities.
The right to freedom of expression could not be interpreted in that manner, concluded the court, declaring Azzopardi’s comments as defamatory.
The court, presided over by Magistrate Rachel Montebello, awarded Abela €7,000 in damages plus costs.
Azzopardi has said he intends to appeal the decision and is prepared to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Lawyer Pawlu Lia assisted Abela.
Lawyer Joseph Zammit Maempel assisted Azzopardi.