Labour MP Alex Muscat has denied any wrongdoing as alleged by a man who claimed a criminal conspiracy that allegedly saw the identity cards of foreign-born Maltese citizens given to foreign residents to vote for the Labour Party.

Muscat served as Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and was politically responsible for the Identity Malta agency at the time referred to by the claims, which date back to 2014. The agency denied the claims on Wednesday.

Muscat also denied any involvement in the revocation of the man’s residence permit in October 2021.

Muscat took to Facebook after he was mentioned in a court application filed on Tuesday by the man claiming to hold evidence of widespread voter fraud dating all the way back to 2014.

He claimed that “thousands of euros” were paid to foreigners living in Malta who were provided with names, surnames and ID cards of a deceased person in order to vote for the Labour Party.

The whistleblower, who was involved in the Labour Party and served as the secretary of the Balzan Labour Party Club, also claimed to have a list of names of the people involved and he knew people who participated in the scheme personally.

The whistleblower claimed he was forced out of Malta in 2021 when his residence permit was revoked "on Muscat’s orders", months after he tried to raise the alarm within the Labour Party of the driving licence racket.

He also claimed that Muscat had asked him to go speak to him at his office and had asked him to help with his electoral campaign. Information that he provided to the police in November 2020 sparked an investigation into the driving licence system and eventually led to the arraignment of three suspects.

The Nationalist Party has demanded an investigation into the claims made in the court application, while the Labour Party has dismissed the claims as fantasy.

The whistleblower, who is not being named to protect his identity, said it was “unacceptable” that Muscat asked him to help out after he had not acted on his claims of corruption since the beginning of September 2021. He claimed Muscat replied that he had the power to “destroy him from Malta”.  

In a Facebook post on Thursday, Muscat denied all the allegations the man had made about him, dismissing them as “lies” and that he would not let anyone tarnish his reputation. He said the man had threatened him that he would “seek revenge” even though he was aware that he was not entitled to citizenship.

“These are lies. I'm not surprised," Muscat stressed.

Last week, independent election candidate Arnold Cassola said the whistleblower was forced to leave the country. He said the whistleblower had expressed a desire to testify via video conferencing in the driving licence racket case opened on the strength of the information he provided to police.

The man, who worked as a translator with Transport Malta by assisting candidates who spoke neither Maltese nor English during their driving exam, wrote an e-mail to the police detailing a racket in which officials were assisting student drivers in cheating on their exam.

This led to three people, TM director Clint Mansueto and officials Raul Antonio Pace and Philip Edrick Zammit, facing corruption charges.

Testimony in court has revealed that Mansueto would pressure driving test examiners to pass certain candidates who were allegedly flagged by ministries, with multiple examiners testifying to the pressure they faced.

Mansueto told police interrogators that he felt pressured to favour certain candidates because they enjoyed the favour of a particular, so-far-unnamed minister. Ministers have all denied any knowledge of the racket.

Cassola said the whistleblower had come to Malta 18 years ago, having been born in the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp and endured a difficult childhood which included surviving the 2002 raid by Israeli forces on the camp.

He eventually came to Malta and qualified as an interpreter in seven languages, making local friends in Malta, particularly among Arabic-speaking Maltese citizens.

Cassola said that, in 2008, the man joined his local Labour Party club where he caught the eye of party officials and eventually became a “special delegate” for the party, keeping tabs on the local Muslim community, encouraging people to vote Labour and engage in fundraising for the party.

After the 2017 elections, he twice applied for Maltese citizenship but was rejected, Cassola said.

It was after this that the man decided he would blow the lid off the driving licence racket that was going on at Transport Malta.