Daphne Caruana Galizia’s heirs have written to the police demanding criminal action into the "fraudulent" government job handed to MP Rosianne Cutajar in 2019.
The family’s lawyer Jason Azzopardi has filed a criminal complaint with both the police commissioner and the attorney general’s office.
In the complaint, the family say the police have since 2020 had evidence of the crimes, which include misappropriation and money laundering.
A damning investigation by the Auditor General published last week revealed how Cutajar’s employment as an Institute for Tourism Studies (ITS) consultant was “fraudulent”, “irregular” and “in breach” of all public employment policies and procedures.
Cutajar had boasted about the cushy job in chats with Yorgen Fenech, who is suspected of orchestrating Caruana Galizia’s assassination in October 2017.
Fenech denies ordering the hit on the journalist and is expected to face trial next year.
In her chats with Fenech, Cutajar said: “I’ve stopped giving a damn… I’ll become a consultant with Pierre of ITS, and pocket another wage.”
She then followed that with: “I don’t care, everybody pigs out”.
Besides slamming the way Cutajar was handed the consultancy job, the auditor general also found she was hired to do work she was not competent to do and there was very little evidence to suggest she did any work at all.
Caruana Galizia’s family has demanded a probe into Cutajar, ITS CEO Pierre Fenech, as well as former Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi and his chief of staff Kevin Borg.
Prime Minister Robert Abela has dismissed calls for Fenech to resign as CEO, instead pinning the blame squarely on Mizzi.
Abela said both Fenech and Borg were simply following orders given to him by the former minister when it came to hiring Cutajar as an ITS consultant.
Abela forced Mizzi out of Labour’s parliamentary group soon after taking power in January 2020.
Mizzi has been implicated in scandals, though has yet to face any charges.
Cutajar herself resigned from Abela’s cabinet after Times of Malta revealed her role as a broker in a €3.1 million property deal involving Yorgen Fenech.
The Nationalist Party has said it will be presenting a parliamentary motion demanding that Cutajar hand back the funds she “undeservedly” received from ITS.
Cutajar resigned from Labour’s parliamentary group in April, after author Mark Camilleri published the entire cache of chats between her and Fenech.
However, she stayed on in parliament as an independent MP.