Robert Abela's law firm chased cut from €3.6 million Paqpaqli charity settlement

Robert Abela’s law firm chased a cut from a €3.6 million out-of-court settlement between a charity and victims of the Paqpaqli crash.

Court documents show a lawyer from Abela’s firm argued that the fees payable for the case should be calculated on the multi-million-euro settlement between the Malta Community Chest Fund and victims of a car crash at the 2015 Paqpaqli għall-Istrina event. 

The settlement led to the case being dropped, meaning that the fees calculated by the courts as owed to the parties, including their lawyers, did not factor in a cut from the €3.6 million settlement.

Sources indicate that the cut would have significantly bumped up Abela’s legal fees.

Lawyers for Robert Abela's firm argued that the fees payable for the case should be calculated on the multi-million-euro settlement

Details about the settlement were only made public in 2018 following parliamentary questions filed by ex-Labour whip Godfrey Farrugia and PN MP Mario Galea.

Galea denied any suggestion that he filed the PQ on Abela’s behalf.

“I submitted the PQ because I felt that the compensation paid was in the public interest,” Galea told Times of Malta.

Farrugia did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

One of the questions filed by PN MP Mario Galea.

Abela’s law firm cited the reply to the PQs by then Finance Minister Edward Scicluna as evidence of the settlement, and argued that the fees should be calculated on the €3.6 million compensation figure.

The court document appears to partially corroborate claims by judge Wenzu Mintoff that Abela, at the time a backbench MP and cabinet consultant, pressured the judge’s staff to calculate the fees payable to the parties based on the out-of-court settlement.

Mintoff accused the prime minister of “caring more about money than an independent judiciary” in a bombshell letter circulated to cabinet this week.

The judge claims Abela threatened to have a member of his staff sacked if she did not revise the way the Paqpaqli fees were calculated.

Judge Lawrence (Wenzu) Mintoff accused the prime minister of caring more about money than judicial independence. File photo: Times of Malta

Abela has denied interfering in the judiciary and invited the Standards Commissioner to investigate the claims in Mintoff’s letter even though they are time-barred. 

The prime minister said the dispute over the Paqpaqli fees happened many weeks after the case was concluded.

He insisted that Mintoff “never said that I ever interfered with a court sentence,” since the matter he referred to is “a function of the court registrar,” not the judiciary.

“There was a lack of agreement on the taxable amount calculated, and that was the issue from start to finish,” Abela said, adding that claims that he did so to get a bigger payday were untrue.

Abela claimed that he worked the case in question pro bono.