Former Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia claims he rarely discussed the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case with his police commissioner Lawrence Cutajar or deputy commissioner Silvio Valletta.

According to Farrugia, he would only request information about the case when he was asked to sign off on certain specific issues. 

“Whenever I did this, I would ask for information and that is the only way I would be informed of some things that were going on,” the minister said.

He did not say what sort of information he sought or what he was signing off on.

Fielding questions from Times of Malta on Wednesday, Farrugia insisted he “always let the institutions do their work” and said his only involvement was making sure the necessary policies were in place to allow investigators to do their work.  

He said he had offered the investigation "limitless" funding and the availability of all the expertise they needed. 

Farrugia was responsible for the police force between June 2017 and January 2020, when Prime Minister Robert Abela took over the government and handed him the Water and Energy portfolio instead. 

Cutajar quit as police chief that same month. Valletta had retired some months prior, in the summer of 2019. 

Murder middleman Melvin Theuma has implicated both men in his court testimony, saying an acquaintance of his secretly met with Cutajar and that Valletta was leaking information to the alleged murder mastermind, Yorgen Fenech.

On Monday, a magistrate ordered a police investigation into claims that Cutajar had leaked information to the murder middleman. 

Both men have denied the allegations. 

Farrugia said he had no knowledge of those allegations during his time as police minister.

"Had I had this information, I would have asked for an investigation," he said.