The Vitals case is a ‘tower of sand’ that “will collapse completely”, Jason Micallef predicted during a Times Talk episode recorded earlier this week.
Micallef, who was last year appointed the Labour Party’s special delegate on the implementation of its electoral manifesto, was speaking during a spirited debate with lawyer and namesake Jason Azzopardi.
“This case will collapse completely,” Micallef warned. “This is a tower of sand that is collapsing, not under a tsunami, but under a small wave. This is how this case was built”.
Micallef was referring to a series of stumbling blocks the case has faced since it opened last May, most recently the persistent refusal of court expert Jeremy Harbinson to travel to Malta to testify in court proceedings.
Harbinson, the director of the since-liquidated Harbinson Forensics, oversaw a report used as the sole basis to prosecute former prime minister Joseph Muscat and other top officials on suspicion of corruption.
In an affidavit submitted last week, Harbinson insisted that he would never return to Malta, saying that he feared for his safety and that his report was never intended to be used as a basis for prosecutions.
Defence lawyers promptly warned that they could request the courts to deem the report inadmissible if Harbinson does not appear for cross-examination.
During the debate, Micallef frequently pointed to the reported €11m cost of the inquiry, arguing that those who trumpeted the report’s findings are now distancing themselves from its repercussions.
“Everyone is running away from the conclusions of the forensic expert Jeremy Harbinson,” Micallef said, with even the report’s author himself distancing himself from proceedings.
“Let’s say you write a bestselling book in which someone finds a mistake. And instead of defending your work, you say ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore, I don’t want to defend it’.”
Micallef also had harsh words for the way in which the inquiry was handled, saying that several people ended up under the inquiry’s spotlight without even knowing and without being given the opportunity to be heard.
Addressing Micallef’s criticism of Harbinson, Azzopardi said that “there are ways for the expert to testify from abroad, such as by letter rogatory”.
He also argued that the government had failed to implement laws that would allow Harbinson to testify by video conference, an argument also made by Repubblika.
“One of the difficulties the court found for him to testify by video conference is that an article in the criminal code says that the justice minister has to issue regulations to allow video conference testimony in circumstances such as these,” Azzopardi said.
But this cannot be done because these regulations haven’t been implemented by justice ministers over the past 12 years, he argued.
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