The Nationalist Party has slammed the government for ordering an inquiry rather than calling on the attorney general to resign after two lawyers were acquitted, on a technicality, of trying to bribe a Times of Malta journalist.

Times of Malta reported earlier on Thursday that  Justice Minister Jonathan Attard had appointed former chief justice Joseph Azzopardi to investigate how the two lawyers had been charged with active bribery but the office of Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg had indicated another provision of law in its note for referral.

Because of this ‘mistake’, lawyers Gianluca Caruana Curran and Charles Mercieca were cleared of the charges.

"The inquiry shows how the government is prepared to do anything to cover up and excuse the attorney general's serious shortcomings," the shadow minister for justice, Karol Aquilina, said in a statement.

The sentence handed down by the Magistrates' Court clearly showed that the two lawyers were acquitted only because of the AG's shortcomings, he said. Instead of acknowledging her mistakes, the AG appealed and is insisting that there was no shortcoming on her part, Aquilina observed.

"To back her intransigence, the justice minister has opted to ignore the court sentence and wants it substituted by a person of his choice in an inquiry that is not public and whose outcome is handed only to him," the shadow minister added. 

The inquiry's only purpose, therefore, was only to retain the attorney general in her post without her assuming responsibility for her actions.

He recalled that in January, the AG reached a 'scandalous' deal whereby she removed the charge of attempted homicide of a policeman by one of the men accused of the HSBC heist.

Aquilina reiterated the PNs called for the AG to resign.