Updated 8.45pm with minister's Facebook post

OPM minister Carmelo Abela’s position is no longer tenable in light of a police investigation into his potential involvement in the failed 2010 HSBC heist, the PN said on Monday. 

Addressing a press conference, PN election candidate Mark Anthony Sammut said the country could not afford to have a minister facing such serious allegations retain his seat. 

Sammut said Abela must either resign or be removed by Prime Minister Robert Abela. 

He defended the PN’s own approach to resignations, saying when the party was in government, people had resigned and later been reinstated when their name was cleared.  PN MP Beppe Fenech Adami insisted that “nowhere in the democratic world” could you have a minister keeping his seat while being investigated in connection with a hold up. 

“We are in a surreal situation where a prominent government minister says he forgot he testified about a hold-up at his workplace. A hold-up that was facilitated by information form inside the bank”. 

Fenech Adami said the claim about forgetting he had testified was enough for Abela to step down. 

“If he does not resign, he should be removed”. 

Fenech Adami recalled that Abela had spent a stint as home affairs minister responsible for the police. 

He questioned whether Abela had told former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat that he had been spoken to by the police about the HSBC case prior to his appointment to the home affairs portfolio

Fenech Adami also accused Robert Abela of picking and choosing who to sack and who to defend, pointing to the recent resignation of Rosianne Cutajar over a Standards Commissioner investigation. 

Carmelo Abela, who was a senior insurance and statistics officer within HSBC’s security department at the time of the attempted heist has denied playing any role in it.

Minister gives statement to the police

Meanwhile, Abela in a Facebook post said he had called at police headquarters of his own volition to give a statement where he denied the allegations being made against him.

He also handed a copy of a sworn declaration he had earlier presented in court in libel proceedings against Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi.