The government was entitled to hire a top London law firm to reply to questions that an “international team of journalists” asked about Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life has concluded.
Commissioner George Hyzler found that the Prime Minister had the right to engage law firm Carter-Ruck to reply to questions sent by blogger Manuel Delia on behalf of himself and a team of overseas journalists.
“The instructions given by the Prime Minister were intended to defend the Government’s interests and not his purely personal interests and those of his wife and colleagues,” the commissioner found.
Questions were sent to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, his wife Michelle, his ministers Konrad Mizzi and Chris Cardona and his chief of staff Keith Schembri on September 2, with replies intended for a book that Mr Delia and two other journalists, John Sweeney and Carlo Bonini, were co-authoring.
The government entrusted its reply to Carter-Ruck, prompting a complaint to Dr Hyzler’s office by lawyer Andrew Borg Cardona.
Dr Borg Cardona believed that the government was abusing of public funds by engaging a top London law firm to reply to questions sent to the five in their personal capacity, and also argued that the government had engaged Carter-Ruck to cause the book authors to fear costly litigation in London.
Dr Hyzler asked the Prime Minister to reply to the claims. In his reply, Dr Muscat noted that questions had been sent to public officials on government email addresses, with his wife included on the assumption that “she was of interest to the authors simply because of her husband’s role in Government”.
Carter-Ruck’s reply was on behalf of government, not on behalf of the individuals, he said.
The allegations made in the questions were defamatory to the government as a whole, Dr Muscat said, adding that in 2012 the Maltese government, led by then-Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, had hired a Brussels law firm to sue a Belgian news agency over an interview published in ‘New Europe’. That case was eventually settled in 2015.
In his report, Dr Hyzler said that the facts of the case indicated that the Prime Minister was out to defend the government’s interests rather than those of the individuals involved. In his role, he had the right to instruct a foreign law firm to protect the government’s interests, Dr Hyzler said.
He also found nothing in the letter that suggested it was intended as threat against their freedom of expression.
The commissioner however emphasised that if the individuals who had received questions were to decide to take legal action against the book authors, they would have to cover their own legal fees.
Any such legal action would be a purely private matter and the government should not be involved, he said.