Former minister Chris Cardona has insisted that the police never questioned him about the claim that only his phone number was stored in a mobile found on the seabed close to the Marsa potato shed. 

Contacted on Thursday, Dr Cardona said the fact that the claim that only his mobile number on the phone was made by Yorgen Fenech with middleman Melvin Thuema and not something that was independently confirmed by the police.

He was referring to the earlier testimony of Mr Theuma in court on Thursday in which he said Fenech had told him how the police had found a mobile phone in the sea close to the Marsa potato shed in December 2017 and that the mobile phone only had Dr Cardona’s number stored. 

"Yorgen told me that only Cardona’s number had been found on that particular mobile phone," Theuma said in court.

The former minister told Times of Malta: “The police haven’t confirmed it. It’s just what Yorgen Fenech told Theuma. The police never questioned me on this particular information." 

Sources close to the investigation confirmed that they had not spoken to Dr Cardona about the claim but stressed that investigations were still ongoing. 

Dr Cardona had been called in for questioning on November 23. Sources said he was summoned to the police headquarters in Floriana and “questioned without caution”, meaning that he was not being treated as a suspect. 

He later said he had told the police he did not have any involvement in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder.

Dr Cardona’s name was once again mentioned during a cabinet meeting later that month when information surfaced that Keith Schembri and Yorgen Fenech had plotted to "frame" Dr Cardona for the murder.