Updated 2.10pm, adds PN statement

Labour deputy leader Chris Cardona has vehemently denied that he either played a part or was aware of a plot to kill Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The embattled politician maintains he has been the victim of an attempt to frame him for the murder, however pressed multiple times he would not identify anybody he believed was trying to pin the crime on him. 

In an extensive interview with Times of Malta, Cardona expressed doubts that another ‘person of interest’, former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri, played any part in the murder.  

Cardona reacted to Monday’s court testimony linking him to the October 2017 murder as “hearsay” but conceded that should the claims of a burner phone containing his number be backed up with hard evidence, they would be damning. 

Self-confessed murder middleman turned State witness Melvin Theuma said he had been told a phone had been dumped at sea near the hitmen’s Marsa hangout. Inside the phone, investigators allegedly discovered two phone numbers: Cardona’s and one for one of the alleged hitmen.  

Asked to react to the claims, Cardona says everything Theuma had told the court in his regard was based on second-hand information and did not come close to the standards required for it to be considered evidence.  

Theuma said he had been told Cardona had sent a middleman of his own to facilitate a payment to the alleged hitmen for the murder. 

Brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio as well as Vincent Muscat stand accused of planting and detonating the bomb that killed Caruana Galizia.  

Cardona denies having had any social relationship with the hitmen, saying he would occasionally frequent the same bars, but nothing more. He also rejects claims he had facilitated a smuggling racket involving the hitmen as a form of payment for the murder.  

According to Theuma, Cardona had allegedly also sent another intermediary to threaten the hitmen were they to reveal his alleged involvement in the murder. 

Cardona also says it is only “natural” that he became a person of interest in the Caruana Galizia murder investigation, and he would have done the same if he was tasked with probing the crime.  

“It was common sense. Had I been the inquiring magistrate I would have sent for myself, as in Chris Cardona,” he says.

Theuma also said he had heard Cardona had suffered an overdose as he crumbled under pressure and guilt for his alleged role in the killing.  

Cardona again denied the claim, saying he could provide his medical records to prove it.  

The former economy minister also sounds a warning for Theuma, saying that if he were to be caught out lying under oath, he risked losing his presidential pardon.  

Asked about his own future, Cardona was coy about whether he planned to leave the Labour Party but admitted that his political career was finished.  

His “expiry date”, he said, had coincided with that of former prime minister Joseph Muscat, but he also conceded that it also came once he was first implicated in the murder.  

The full interview can be read here.

Cardona and Schembri controlling Abela - PN

Prime Minister Robert Abela ended up a hostage of Cardona and Schembri who were defending each other and controlling the Prime Minister. Why, good governance spokesman Karol Aquilina asked in a statement.

He said that even though Cardona himself had admitted that had he been the inquiring magistrate he would have interrogated himself, Abela did not take any action.

Aquilina posed the following questions.

*Which Prime Minister of a serious country kept a deputy who was implicated in the assassination of a journalist?

*Which Prime Minister who respected the rule of law did not ask why the police had not yet arrested Cardona and Schembri?

* Why was Cardona defending Schembri?

* What did Abela and Cardona agree upon when they met?

* What was the real reason behind Cardona’s resignation?

* What is Abela hiding?

* Is Cabinet still convinced Cardona had been framed up? If so, by who?

Truth, Aquilina said, would eventually prevail.