The Labour government has yet to say if it will support an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) Bill proposed by Opposition MP Jason Azzopardi.
Almost all independent media houses, including the Times of Malta, recently faced the threat of ruinous lawsuits by Pilatus Bank in foreign jurisdictions.
SLAPP lawsuits are designed to silence and intimidate critics, often by burdening them with lawsuits in foreign jurisdictions. A leaked FIAU report cited Pilatus Bank’s owner, Ali Sadr, as having a “close association” with the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri.
Slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and online portal The Shift faced similar threats from passport concessionaires Henley & Partners.
E-mails published on Ms Caruana Galizia’s blog indicated that the Henley & Partners chairman, Christian Kalin, had “conspired” with Mr Schembri and the Prime Minister to hit the blogger with crippling lawsuits.
MEPs say that the problem is not exclusive to Malta
Questions sent to the Office of the Prime Minister asking if the government would be supporting the Bill were not answered by the time of writing.
READ: ‘State has to protect the freedom of the media’
Dr Azzopardi’s Bill will seek to ensure that the Maltese courts are the sole jurisdiction in which legal procedures against Malta-based publications and journalists can be heard.
The Bill also seeks to ban the execution in Malta of any judgment against Maltese media made abroad.
Earlier this month, a cross-party group of MEPs proposed the introduction of EU-wide legislation banning SLAPP suits.
The group of MEPs, including David Casa, asked the European Commission to propose an anti-SLAPP directive that would allow such lawsuits to be dismissed, punish firms which tried to bully media into submission and name and shame companies which resorted to such practices.
READ: SLAPP down companies bullying free press, MEPs urge Commission
“In Malta we have seen that firms like Pilatus Bank and Henley & Partners that employ these practices, using American litigation, have succeeded in having stories altered or deleted completely from online archives,” said the MEPs calling for an anti-SLAPP directive, noting that the problem was not exclusive to Malta.
The Guardian and BBC have both been threatened with costly legal action by financial service behemoth Appleby following the Paradise Papers revelations.
“The cross-border nature of investigative journalism, as well as the tendency to pursue legal action in jurisdictions outside the European Union, only have a tenuous connection with the parties justifies and requires an EU response,” the MEPs said.