Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has both “a whistleblower and documents” to back up her Egrant reports, she told The Sunday Times of Malta.
Her allegations that the mysterious third Panama company belonged to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s wife, Michelle, set the country alight last week. However, many have questioned the veracity of the reports, calling on Ms Caruana Galizia to substantiate her claims.
Asked about this, she said: “I not only have the documents, I have the best possible proof, which is a real-life whistleblower.”
Reacting to public calls for the evidence to be made public, Ms Caruana Galizia said this was “beyond pathetic”. People, she said, were asking for proof “almost as though they wanted to defend the corrupt”. “It is not I who should be proving the guilt of these people, but they who should be proving their innocence,” she said.
Ms Caruana Galizia added that the court of public opinion was not held to the same standards as a Criminal Court.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt was entirely separate from public opinion, she said, adding that concrete evidence was now for the police and the processes of justice and a criminal trial to establish.
Ms Caruana Galizia’s reports have indeed prompted a magisterial inquiry, which Dr Muscat requested late on Thursday night after the allegations first emerged.
Minister Without Portfolio Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Keith Schembri, for whom the two other Panama companies were opened, both testified yesterday before the inquiring magistrate, along with Mrs Muscat.
Absent from the courts, however, was Ms Caruana Galizia.
She told this newspaper yesterday that the only way she was stepping foot in a courtroom was if she was “dragged in under arrest”.
And even if so, “If they want to drag me in only for us to look at each other after saying hello, it’s up to them,” she added.
Asked why she would not cooperate with the inquiry, she said that to do so would raise journalistic concerns.
“I am refusing to go on the basis that I have a source.
“As any fool would have worked out, I did not go in and get those documents myself,” she said.
Ms Caruana Galizia added that as a journalist, she could not risk her source suspecting that she was collaborating with the police, especially as this person had come forward at great personal risk.