Lawyers for Opposition leader Adrian Delia are calling for three ministers to explain under oath how they obtained information from the Egrant report which had clearly not formed part of the published conclusions.

This call was made on Monday morning at the first hearing of the appeal proceedings filed by Dr Delia after the First Hall, Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction had turned down his application to have a full copy of the report drawn up by former magistrate Aaron Bugeja.

Lawyer Vincent Galea said government Ministers Edward Scicluna, Chris Cardona and Konrad Mizzi, when testifying in separate proceedings, had cited a paragraph from the Egrant report that had not been included in the 50 pages of published conclusions.

The lawyer requested that these ministers should be summoned to testify about this fact.

The request was immediately rebutted by Attorney General Peter Grech who said that these amounted to facts extraneous to the appeal proceedings.

However, Dr Galea insisted that after being told that the AG had given a copy to the Prime Minister, the Justice Minister, the head of government communications Kurt Farrugia as well as lawyer Pawlu Lia, it had emerged that three other ministers obviously had information drawn from the report.

This fact had come to light after the Opposition Leader had filed his appeal, Dr Galea argued.

In the light of this request, the court, presided over by Chief Justice Joseph Azzopardi, and Mr Justices Giannino Caruana Demajo and Noel Cuschieri, directed Dr Galea to file a written application, to which the AG would file a reply.

Final oral submissions on the request would be made at the next hearing, after which the Court would deliver its decision on the matter.

The case was adjourned to July 15. Lawyer Victoria Buttigieg was also assisting the AG.