Keith Schembri is set to face charges following a five-year inquiry into leaks around the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder investigation.
Sources said Schembri, a chief of staff to ex-prime minister Joseph Muscat, is set to be charged with perjury and breaching the Official Secrets Act.
The probe was triggered after Yorgen Fenech, charged with complicity in the journalist’s murder, claimed information about the investigation was leaked to him by Schembri.
Schembri phoned Fenech the night before his alleged attempt to flee Malta in November 2019.
The ex-chief of staff has testified that Muscat told him to contact the Tumas businessman and stop him from leaving Malta.
Muscat has admitted to directing Schembri to make the call. “I had spoken to Keith Schembri and I remember telling him over the phone, ‘make sure this guy doesn’t leave’,” Muscat said following Schembri’s testimony.
The former prime minister said that on the day of Fenech’s arrest, he received information which was “corroborated by a number of sources and authorities”, that there may be a move by Fenech to leave the country.
Muscat said that, once informed, he had taken the measures he believed necessary and said these were documented with a number of authorities, including with the AFM.
Fenech has further claimed Schembri leaked him a draft copy of the presidential pardon given to the murder middleman Melvin Theuma.
Last April, judge Lawrence Mintoff said Schembri continued to attend the murder briefings at Castille even when Theuma’s pardon was being discussed.
The court said it had "great doubts" about whether "Schembri’s personal interests were prevailing and taking the upper hand against the public interest" in the case.
He never declared his “fraternal friendship” with Fenech, even after the businessman became a police suspect and had his phone tapped by security services.
The court said that the "cowardly and disloyal" leaks continued to the extent that the men eventually convicted of carrying out the assassination had themselves been tipped off about their December 2017 arrest at a Marsa potato shed.
Lawyer and former MP Jason Azzopardi said the case against Schembri will start on Wednesday and criminal charges will also be issued against others.