A court’s decision to reject Repubblika’s request for the police to take criminal action against Pilatus Bank's top officials went directly against a magistrate’s conclusions, the NGO’s lawyer has argued.
In rejecting the request, the court effectively “usurped” the findings of a magisterial probe which recommended criminal action against the officials, Jason Azzopardi argued in court.
“The inquiry ordered that action be taken against a set of people… The first court usurped the powers of the inquiring magistrate by deciding otherwise,” Azzopardi said.
This was one of the arguments put forward by Repubblika in its submissions on Tuesday against that court decision.
The case centres on the conclusions of a magisterial inquiry which concluded that various Pilatus Bank officials should face criminal charges on the suspicion of money laundering, criminal association and other crimes. The magisterial inquiry also found possible trading in influence between its chairman Ali Sadr and former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri.
But while international arrest warrants were issued for the arrest of various bank officials, they were not charged.
In 2022, Repubblika went to court in an attempt to force the police to charge the other officials named in the inquiry.
Last month Magistrate Nadine Lia, who presided over the challenge, rejected the request on the basis that the evidence brought forward was not sufficient to issue such an order.
Former Repubblika president Robert Aquilina appealed the decision. He argued that he presented a substantial amount of evidence before the court, including an authenticated copy of the Pilatus Inquiry and internal emails from the Police Force.
He also noted that the judgment was riddled with legal and factual errors and that its conclusions were based on these inaccuracies.
During submissions made before Madame Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera, presiding over the appeal, Azzopardi said the first court had said that the reports exhibited by Aquilina did not include the names of the people to be charged, but they clearly did.
Many documents were exhibited, including the conclusion of the magisterial inquiry, yet all were ignored.
Azzopardi described the decision as “flabbergasting” and “contradictory”. He said the court said it would not enter into the merits of the case, but then went into the merits of the case by saying there was “hearsay and speculation” - without specifying what she meant.
He described as “legal heresy” the magistrate's conclusion that police’s hands were tied due to the pending international arrest warrants. In the past, charges had been filed before warrants were executed, he argued.
Azzopardi added that Magistrate Lia was not objective in the way she treated the case. She seemed to be more concerned about how Aquilina obtained the documents he exhibited, than about the content of those documents, and ordered an investigation into this.
Attorney General lawyer Ramon Bonett Sladden called for the appeal to be rejected. He said that the method of issuing charges was a matter of approach. The prosecution could decide to issue them before requesting an international arrest warrant, or after.
He said the law did not state that the conclusions of a magisterial inquiry “are the last word”. The prosecution can choose to issue different charges and charge different people than the ones identified in the inquiry.
He added that the legal challenge was not necessary, as it could lead to two concurrent prosecutions: one led by the AG and one by the police.
To this Azzopardi added that, despite that, no charges had been issued so far. “That’s how eager the State is to take action against these people,” he said adding that this was a matter of “brazen and crass inaction by the State”.